In total, 22 former players came to the ‘Alumni Lunch’ at the Tottenham Hotspur training ground on August 13.The oldest of those meeting the current players were the two 81-year-olds, Pat Jennings and Phil Beal, veterans of Bill Nicholson’s team of the 1960s. There were players from the Keith Burkinshaw era, too: Steve Perryman, Glenn Hoddle, Chris Hughton, Mark Falco and Graham Roberts. There were winners of the 1991 FA Cup, Erik Thorstvedt, Gary Mabbutt, David Howells. And more modern greats, from Les Ferdinand to Jermain Defoe to Michael Dawson.Between them all there were a combined 6,509 Tottenham appearances and 41 major trophies. It is hard to remember a greater concentration of combined Tottenham wisdom, Tottenham understanding, in any given room at any time.After they watched training — as far as was possible given it was the hottest day of the year — the veteran players had lunch with the current Tottenham squad, and head coach Roberto De Zerbi. Giving them a rare chance to share with what in some cases were players young enough to be their grandchildren what it meant to them to play for Spurs.Behind this was a simple idea, one that has been a big part of Tottenham’s busy summer: to reconnect the club to its past, to remind everyone of its roots and the people who had come before them. Which is why there has been a new focus on ‘Legacy Numbers’, for both the men’s and women’s teams, to place every individual player in the long line of those who came before them.Next month Tottenham will relaunch their ‘Hall of Fame’ by the players’ tunnel in the new stadium, with new inductees in addition to the current 45.All of this might sound very obvious. Or, worse than obvious, like heart-warming shareable PR content to juice the mood on the eve of the new season. But the reality of Tottenham Hotspur in the last few years is that the club has become unmoored from any real sense of what it means to be Tottenham. And one of the big questions and challenges for the club going into this new season is to finally reconnect.The face of the club now is Roberto De Zerbi, who will start his Tottenham tenure in earnest on Saturday with the opening weekend trip to Brentford. He was an enthusiastic participant in the ‘Alumni Lunch’ and his football — attacking and innovative — is integral to this Spurs resembling a true Spurs team this season.Can De Zerbi help Spurs finally find a suitable identity? (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)But ultimately the solution to this has to be bigger than just one person. Because the problem is itself so deep, something that has grown and grown since Tottenham moved into their new stadium in 2019, if not before.The story of modern Tottenham has been the story of near-constant resets, relaunches, rethinks, restructures, reboots, reviews and even returns, in the case of Fabio Paratici’s three months back as a co-sporting director last season.