‘I used to be a Spurs star after we fell to lasagne-gate – a hearth was lit in my guts’

Few football stories spark as much intrigue and fascination as Tottenham’s infamous ‘lasagne-gate’.

On the final day of the 2005/06 season, Spurs were on the brink of a top-four finish and just one match away from trumping their fierce rivals Arsenal for a Champions League spot. Martin Jol’s side faced West Ham, only needing to equal Arsenal’s result against Wigan in the Gunners’ final match at Highbury.

But their hopes were shattered when almost the entire Spurs team was struck down with food poisoning on the night before and the morning of their crucial match. Rumours began to swirl prior to kick-off at Upton Park that the players had consumed a questionable lasagne at the Marriott Hotel in Canary Wharf, east London, where they had stayed on the evening of May 6, 2006.

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Spurs boss Jol was informed of the situation in the morning and tried to have the game postponed or at least delayed by a few hours. The Premier League responded by stating that failure to play the fixture would result in a points deduction, a penalty previously imposed on Middlesbrough a decade earlier.

Despite feeling sick and nauseous, the Lilywhites rallied together in the dressing room, determined not to let their upset stomachs ruin their season. Their efforts proved futile, however, as they suffered a 2-1 defeat, while a Thierry Henry hat-trick allowed the other half of north London to breathe a sigh of relief in N5, reports the Mirror.

A gutted Jol revealed post-match: “We had 10 players feeling sick overnight. We asked to postpone the game for 24 hours but we didn’t want to risk sanctions.

“We took a gamble but I think you saw we weren’t strong enough. We’re in Europe and that’s the main target but to be fourth for most of the season and lose it on the last day is a big disappointment. We’re gutted. I have never experienced anything like this in football before.”

The ill-fated buffet-style dinner at the Marriott, which also included steak, chicken and pasta, led to Edgar Davids, Teemu Tainio, Robbie Keane, Michael Dawson, Michael Carrick, Aaron Lennon, Radek Cerny, Calum Davenport, Lee Barnard, Tom Huddlestone and Lee Young-pyo all becoming violently ill.

Reflecting on the lead-up to the crunch match, Spurs hero Jermaine Defoe, who escaped the sickness, told Transfer Talk podcast: “I remember the build up to the game. It was massive for the football club. We felt like we deserved it, I remember going into the game and everyone was buzzing.

“We had the evening meal and went to bed, and I remember a call from the doctor to ask how I was feeling, because a lot of the lads were not well. I thought it was like one or two, but quite a few were struggling. I couldn’t believe it.

“Such an important game and seven of the lads were sick. I still respect guys such as Michael Carrick, who went out and played even though they were struggling.”

Midfielder Carrick, who was deeply affected by the situation, expressed in his 2018 autobiography: “I’d never endured agony like this. It felt like a fire was lit in my guts with petrol poured on it again and again. The pain kept flaring up and I curled up in bed, praying for it to pass.”

Davenport, who came onto the field as a substitute that day, revealed he was woken up by the need to be sick. He confessed: “I was in a bad way. I remember waking up at about 5am and thinking, ‘I never wake up for the toilet or anything, what is wrong here? ‘ I got on the toilet and had my head in the sink and my backside on the toilet and… well, it wasn’t pretty.

“I couldn’t get off the toilet so I rang the team doctor and explained how I felt. I was told, ‘Calum, you’re not the only one, I’ve had some other people on the phone as well’. I was given something to make me feel a bit better and then went down to breakfast.”

He admitted: “Preparation is everything at that level and on the eve of a big game you had to stop yourself thinking, ‘This has all gone against us right on the finish line.”

Captain Ledley King, who along with Defoe was lucky enough to avoid the illness, also lamented the unfortunate timing and recalled: “The players were not ready to play football. I don’t know how they played. I thought at the time, this is just our luck isn’t it? It’s just Tottenham.”

Teemu Tainio labelled the incident as his career’s most gut-wrenching letdown. In a candid chat with West Ham legend Mark Noble on TNT Sports in April 2024, Jermaine Jenas did not hold back either.

Jenas raged: “There was this moment where we were sat in the dressing room and there were eight, nine, 10 people being sick everywhere. One is in the toilet, one’s in the sink, one’s in a bucket, everyone’s just being sick everywhere. And then all you could hear was the biggest party ever going on in the dressing room opposite.”

The One Show’s host recounted how Jol was itching to sub Davids off due to his poor performance until Carrick intervened, pleading: “Don’t you dare – I can’t last another second on this pitch, take me off now.”

Spurs’ chairman Daniel Levy launched an immediate probe into the debacle as soon as he got wind of it in the morning. A lawyer, an FA doctor and even the police were called in in an effort to solve the mystery.

Initially, it looked like a case of food poisoning, with Defoe confessing in 2017 that he suspected: “Something has definitely gone on here, one of the West Ham lads has done something to the food.”

Whispers surrounding the Marriott chef being a Gunners supporter with a grudge against Spurs’ Champions League dreams started doing the rounds, fuelling the conspiracy.

Blood and urine samples were taken to try to establish the cause of the sickness. But contrary to popular belief, a consultant in communicable disease control at the North-East and Central London Health Protection Unit suggested that the outbreak may have been caused by viral gastroenteritis, not food poisoning.

However, nearly two decades later, Tottenham’s stars still feel hard done by the incident. “Funnily enough I was one of the ones that was actually fine,” Goalkeeper Robinson said.

“It was a difficult situation for the club. We’d been in prime position all season, we let it slip with poor results.

“We went to White Hart Lane on the last day with our own destiny in our own hands. As it was well documented, a lot of the boys were sick the night before. We turned in a brave performance but it was nowhere near good enough to win the game. We were poor. There was opportunity for excuses.

“Once one or two of the boys went down ill, I’m not for one minute saying not everyone was ill, but when poor performances happen and we lost the game, a lot of that was attributed to the night before.”