Tottenham Hotspur are reportedly facing a potential legal challenge over their long-standing use of a song that has become a staple of the club\u2019s matchday atmosphere.<\/p>\n
Barry Manilow\u2019s 1975 hit \u2018Can\u2019t Smile Without You\u2019 has been embraced by Spurs fans for more than 20 years and is routinely played before and after games at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The club even displayed a large banner with the song\u2019s title over empty seats during lockdown-era matches.<\/p>\n
According to The Sun, Geoff Morrow \u2014 one of the song\u2019s writers and an Arsenal supporter \u2014 has asked Tottenham to pay royalties for its use. He claims the club has shown no interest in meeting with him, saying: \u201cWhen we wrote it, we never expected it to become a football anthem. It was a love song. What\u2019s frustrating is that Spurs won\u2019t admit they\u2019re using our song.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report adds that some Premier League clubs, such as Liverpool with \u2018You\u2019ll Never Walk Alone\u2019, do pay royalties for songs sung by fans. Tottenham, however, maintain that Morrow\u2019s request has no legal grounds under licensing regulations. The club declined to comment when approached.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tottenham Hotspur are reportedly facing a potential legal challenge over their long-standing use of a song that has become a staple of the club\u2019s matchday atmosphere. Barry Manilow\u2019s 1975 hit \u2018Can\u2019t Smile Without You\u2019 has been embraced by Spurs fans for more than 20 years and is routinely played before and after games at the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":54867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/hotspur-way-43-750x500-2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54927"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54928,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54927\/revisions\/54928"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/54867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}