Tribal Football

Maddison: You can sense a change at Spurs in derby week

Maddison: You can sense a change at Spurs in derby week
Maddison: You can sense a change at Spurs in derby weekAction Plus
Tottenham midfielder James Maddison says he can sense a change of atmosphere around the club when it's derby week.

Spurs meet Arsenal on Sunday for the first North London Derby of the season.

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"I don’t feel like you need to do too much," Maddison told Optus Sport. "Just being around here, coming into work every day, even just living locally, the build up for a north London derby is a little bit different to the other games - in the media, for the fans, social media, everything gets bigged up that little bit more for this one.

"So, we know what it means and, obviously, having played in my first two last year, I know what it means to our fans and how in this part of the world, in north London... the population is kind of split between Tottenham and Arsenal and bragging rights within families and all that sort of stuff off the field.

"Last year I kind of learned basically how much it meant for Tottenham to play against Arsenal and what it means to actually beat your local rival, even though it's just one game and even though it's just three points, it's the same three points you get for beating another team, but what it actually means to our supporters to try to beat them and hopefully we can do that and send our fans home happy with the bragging rights."