Spurs stories | The evening David Ginola jumped on a powerboat to sign for Spurs...

David Ginola made his name at our UEFA Super Cup opponents Paris St Germain in the mid-1990s. He won everything domestically, including the Ligue 1 title in 1993/94, and was named French Player of the Year in 1993 and Ligue 1 Player of the Season in 1994/95.

His performances - which included a European CWC semi-final win against Arsenal in 1994 - certainly caught the eye of Premier League clubs and after 44 goals in 158 appearances between 1991-1995, Newcastle United came calling in the summer of 1995.

He certainly thrilled the Toon faithful, but two years later, in the summer of 1997, he was unveiled as a Spurs player.

It was the start of glorious spell in Lilywhite, three years when he was absolute Box Office in N17.

He scored a showreel of spectacular goals - highlights include FA Cup goals against Barnsley, Leeds, Watford and Wimbledon, a ping into the top corner against Manchester United in the quarter-final of the League Cup and Premier League strikes against the likes of Liverpool, Chelsea, Middlesbrough and Everton. He didn't do tap ins!

To underline how good he was at his peak, 1998/99 - a season that included our League Cup win against Leicester City at Wembley - take a look at individual honours that season. United won the treble of Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League. They had Schmeichel, Neville, Stam, Beckham, Keane, Scholes, Giggs, Sheringham, Yorke and Cole - yet Ginola won both the PFA and Football Writers’ awards. That’s how good he was.

So, how did 'Le Magnifique' join Spurs? It's a fascinating story, detailed in the 2007 book the Tottenham Hotspur Opus - and here's an excerpt, in Ginola's words...

How did your move from Newcastle United to Tottenham Hotspur came about?

"I was a Newcastle player at the time, but I’d always wanted to play for Barcelona. During my summer holidays, I was sitting by my swimming pool when I received a phone call from Bobby Robson, who was Barcelona manager at the time. He told me, ‘David, I will be straightforward. We want you at Barcelona, no matter what. This is a club decision and we will do anything to bring you to Barcelona’. Two years before, I’d had the same conversation with Johan Cryuff and it didn’t happen for me, unfortunately. I started to think it would be an opportunity to join a club I really, really would love to play for.

"And so I said to Bobby Robson (Barca boss), ‘What do you want me to do?’. ‘Nothing,” he replied. ‘We are going to put a proposition on the table and see if they are interested.’ And they said the price and Newcastle said, ‘No, he is not for sale. We sold Andy Cole the year before and had problems with the fans, so we don’t want the same problem. David is loved in Newcastle, there is no way he is going to go anywhere’.

"So I called Kevin Keegan and said: ‘Gaffer, I really want to go to Barcelona because I am a Latin boy, and I am 31 so this will probably be my last opportunity to join a club who play Champions League games year in, year out.’ And he said, ‘I can’t do that. I respect the fans too much. You’re going to stay’.

"I just had to say, ‘Okay, that’s football’, and I stayed. But six months later Kevin Keegan resigned. The new manager was Kenny Dalglish and he didn’t see me fitting in [to his plans] and I was the first to be put on the transfer list. This guy didn’t appreciate me at all, as a player or as a man. He didn’t try to get to know me, so I started to think, ‘Well, it’s probably time for me to go’.

"Then I had a phone call from Gerry Francis and he told me, ‘David, we love you, we want you at the club’. I love English football, I love the Premier League and it was an opportunity to join a club with a certain image of glamour, of playing nice football. I knew it was one of the best clubs in the country, but was in search of trophies to regain the honour of the past. I thought to myself, ‘Well, why not? To be part of that would be a good challenge’."

Sir Alan Sugar tells the story about how you came up the coast on a powerboat to sign the deal...

"Alan Sugar told me, ‘David, we need to sign the contract’. I was on holiday at my home in Nice and it was quatorze julliet - July 14 - a national holiday in France. It was full of people, with fireworks everywhere, and busy roads. He said he was on his yacht near Monaco and would like me to visit him and his family.
I said, ‘Okay, I will be there at 7pm’. But I was having lunch at a friend’s restaurant when I started to see a massive queue on the road and I didn’t think I was going to get there by 7pm. My friends had an offshore speedboat which could go 80 or 90 knots. I said, ‘Listen, I need to sign my contract with Tottenham Hotspur with Mr Sugar on his boat. Do you mind taking me there?’.

"As we approached, I remember he was standing on the side of his boat - he had his grandchildren with him for a week and he heard me arriving in this very noisy boat. He said, ‘Who the hell is that guy coming to annoy me?’ and I started to wave at him. I thought he was going to throw things at me. I said, ‘Mr Sugar, it is me, David’. We had dinner, smoked a cigar and I slept on the boat. At midnight I said I should go back, but he said, ‘No, now you are a Spurs player you stay on the boat and leave tomorrow. It is too dangerous for you to go back by night’. So we had a lovely night on his beautiful boat and at 6.45am the next morning I said goodbye and we left. That is the story of the beginning of my years at Spurs. Very chic, isn’t it?"