For Tottenham fans, the news of Harry Kane and other Spurs players having been ill ahead of the final match of the Premier League season will stir up flashbacks of that fateful day in 2006 when a lasagne was blamed for something that wasn't actually its fault.
For those who might not remember, in May that year Spurs only had to travel to West Ham and match Arsenal's result against Wigan in order to finally finish in fourth place and clinch a place in the Champions League.
Martin Jol had prepared his team methodically in the final week of the season and with Robbie Keane fit again, he was confident the team could overcome a midtable Hammers side with one eye on their FA Cup final against Liverpool the following weekend. The big Dutchman couldn’t possibly know what was about to happen.
READ MORE: Antonio Conte admits he'd ask Daniel Levy 'are you joking?' if Spurs chairman made one demand
As was the norm for away games in London, the Spurs team checked into a hotel at 7pm the night before the match. For the West Ham tie, they picked the five-star Marriott Hotel in Canary Wharf. Coincidentally, Arsenal had gathered next door at the Four Seasons Hotel.
A buffet dinner was laid out for the Spurs squad in a specially-booked room. It included lasagne and fish dishes and the player tucked in. Then everyone headed back to their rooms to drift off to sleep and dream about the Champions League.
A couple of years after that fateful day, I interviewed Hans Segers, Spurs' then goalkeeping coach. I'll let the former Tottenham keeper take up the story of what happened next.
"It was such a strange incident. I woke up the next morning and I went downstairs. It had all been organised that the squad would go for a walk and then have the pre-match meal," he explained. "There was a lot of activity downstairs. Then I spoke to the club doctor who told me we had six or seven players who had fallen ill during the night. Then that morning there was another couple who felt bad.
"They couldn’t go for the walk, because they needed to go to the toilet every minute. It was unbelievable. I was fine, but they were all over the place. It was a nightmare for us. The chairman came in. We had meetings about postponing the match. Could we postpone the game? No, we couldn’t otherwise the other team would get the three points. Could we delay it for a couple of hours? No, we couldn’t for police reasons. The maximum was an hour.
"Then Martin decided we needed to keep the normal pre-match preparation going and get to the stadium at the normal time. We wanted to keep everything possible the same as normal and see how we went. We had to phone up lots of reserve players to be ready. It was such a strange situation. The players were dead on their feet. They were being ill in the tunnel before the game. Only a couple were alright to play."
If Jol wasn't already sick himself, the list of affected players would have probably turned his stomach. Star men Robbie Keane, Michael Carrick and Michael Dawson were among the first group affected. Dawson and Carrick in particular, could barely stand.
As the morning wore on, Edgar Davids, Teemu Tainio and Aaron Lennon joined the casualty list. This wasn’t mild sickness. The players were vomiting violently and had diarrhoea. By mid-morning the affected list of names read Davids, Tainio, Keane, Dawson, Carrick, Lennon, Cerny, Davenport, Barnard and Lee.
For their part, West Ham were willing to help out in any way they could. They were happy to postpone the match as long as it was played after the FA Cup final, but as Segers explained the best they could hope for was an hour’s delayed kick-off which wouldn’t have made any difference to the players’ conditions.
Jol later revealed: "I can sum up the players who were not sick. There was Paul Robinson, Stephen Kelly, Anthony Gardner and Jermain Defoe and the rest were sick. So we had to call for some reserve players."
Spurs gave it their all on the day and amid the drama lost 2-1 at West Ham, despite Tottenham old boy Teddy Sheringham missing a penalty for the hosts. Some joker placed toilet rolls on the wall behind the Spurs bench amid it all.
Jol said after the match: "We went out for the warm-up and our fans were great and that made the lads feel a bit stronger, but if you’ve had food poisoning you need fluids and food - a couple of the guys hadn’t eaten since Saturday.
"It was a strange situation. In the team meeting everyone said, ‘Gaffer, we want to go over there and we want to play’, and that they would try the warm-up and if that went okay, they would play.
"They came back into the dressing room afterwards and we made the decision to play. In the end it was disappointing, but I’m still proud of them because there were heroes out there.
"If you saw Dawson he was very sick, I can tell you, but he still played 90 minutes and gave everything. Michael Carrick was the same, but he couldn’t go on. It wasn’t our best game, but under the circumstances we tried our best."
Spurs chairman Daniel Levy was furious and sent an official open letter of complaint to Dave Richards, chairman of the Premier League. He also stated that the majority of Premier League clubs were in support of the game being replayed – a gesture that was also officially requested. Even FIFA’s then president Sepp Blatter backed the idea.
The Premier League rejected the replay request. Police and trading standards were still investigating the incidents at the hotel, while the test results were awaited. When the findings finally came back, the conspiracy theories were finally laid to rest and the lasagne was cleared.
The actual reason for the outbreak was that one of the players had carried the Novo virus and spread it around the squad. Even to this day the poor lasagne has its name dragged through the mud without being at fault.
Today, with a stomach virus having worked its way around some in the Tottenham squad in the past week and a half you can't help but think back to that day 16 years ago as Spurs prepare to travel to Norwich this weekend.
Hugo Lloris played the full 90 minutes against Burnley last Sunday despite having had a fever and stomach problems. Dejan Kulusevski, Pierluigi Gollini and Harry Winks also caught the bug and earlier this week Emerson Royal had to miss a couple of days before returning to training at Hotspur Way after feeling unwell.
Then Kane cancelled his appearance on Friday at the Museum of London's new display celebrating his career because he was feeling unwell.
"If you remember the last game against Burnley we had four cases with stomach problems. This week I have to be honest we had a couple of cases about this, but we overcame this situation," explained Antonio Conte.
"Also members of the staff for one day they were not feeling so good. I don't know why but the last week and also this week we faced this situation. In this moment honestly this virus is the last of our problems because we are very close to reach a big achievement for the club, for our fans, for the players. We are totally focused on the game and the situation of the players, the availability, is the same as the last game against Burnley."
On Kane, he added that the striker would be fine: "Yeah for sure. Also because in the last game we had Deki (Kulusevski) with this problem - he didn’t have training with us on Saturday but on Sunday he was good to play. For sure Harry doesn’t want to miss this type of game. This game means a lot for everybody.
"[The virus] is a problem that lasts one or two days and then you are okay. Also the medical department, they try to take care of it, with vitamins. This problem in that moment we have to face, but in my mind it is not a problem. We are ready, we are ready to fight and to try and get a good result on Sunday."
When Conte was told of the 'Lasagnegate' incident back in 2006, he laughed and waved it away.
"I don't want to know this story! It’s not a lucky story. I’m not interested to know, to go deep in this story!" he said. "We are in a good moment of form this week and the team worked very well this week, we prepared very well.
"We have to be focused, to be concentrated 100% for this last game because you know very well because I don't know how many times I repeat it but in England there are no easy games. I remember in my experience as a player I had a last game lucky situation and an unlucky situation."
Tottenham Hotspur will be hoping that they've had their unlucky situation back in 2006 and now it's their turn for a bit of luck.
