Kane scored his first Spurs goal against Shamrock Rovers in the 2011-12 Europa League (Julien Behal/Getty Images)
Quite unusually, Spurs failed to progress from their group, even with 10 points. But after defeat at home to PAOK in the penultimate game put them on the brink of elimination, Redknapp could hardly have sounded less bothered. “You can’t have it all ways,” he shrugged in his post-match press conference. “The important thing is that we have the players fresh for the Premier League at the weekend.” Spurs did in fact finish fourth in the league that season. And if Bayern Munich had beaten Chelsea in the Champions League final, then Spurs would have been back in the Champions League in 2012-13. Redknapp’s gamble almost paid off.
But when Villas-Boas replaced Redknapp in the summer of 2012, he took a very different approach. Before Spurs’ first game against Lazio — Hugo Lloris’ debut — he said in his pre-match press conference that he wanted to transform how everyone at the club saw the Europa League. “The most important thing for you is to change (the mentality) of the players so this midweek game starts being important once again,” he said. “If this was a Champions League game, most of the players would be willing and would be making sure they were completely fit.”
It was a brave policy from Villas-Boas given he was always going to be judged by whether he could finish fourth. It would have been easier to just focus on that and forget about Thursday nights. But there was something thrilling about how much he obviously cared about Europe. Especially as he kept playing Gareth Bale, in the season when he played as if unbound by traditional limits.
Bale was flying in 2012-13 until an injury against Basel (John Walton/PA Images via Getty Images)
Of all Bale’s scarcely believable performances that year, one of the greatest was Lyon at home in the last-32 first leg. He scored a brilliant free kick at the very end of the first half and then another at the very end of the second.
When Spurs hosted Inter Milan in the last-16 first leg, they blew them away with a fast, relentless performance, winning 3-0. Days after beating Arsenal 2-1 at home, this was the high point of the Villas-Boas era. It felt at the time like they could win the Europa League and still have enough in the tank to get fourth. Of course, the reality was ultimately rather different. Spurs ran out of steam, only scraping through the second leg in Milan, then looking exhausted when they faced Basel in the quarters. Mohamed Salah ran rings around them at White Hart Lane, Bale injured his ankle, and while Spurs survived with a draw, they ended up drawing the second leg and losing on penalties. The “negative spiral” Villas-Boas had predicted of Arsenal actually belonged to Tottenham. They ended up fifth, one point behind Arsenal. Villas-Boas’ bet on Europe was a bust. He lasted only half of the following season.
So it was Tim Sherwood rather than Villas-Boas who took over for the knockout rounds the following year. Spurs had Benfica in the last 16, a tie most notable for Benfica manager Jorge Jesus taunting Sherwood when Benfica went 3-1 up at White Hart Lane. Sherwood said before the return leg that he had “no respect” for Jesus and that Tottenham had received “a lot of emails from Benfica fans apologising for their manager’s behaviour”. A second-string Spurs team drew 2-2 in Lisbon — two assists from a 20-year-old Kane — and were eliminated.
Sherwood rages as Spurs lose to Benfica in 2013-14 (Andrew Matthews/PA Images via Getty Images)
When Pochettino replaced Sherwood, there was a chance for a reset in Spurs’ relationship with the competition. It gave Pochettino a chance to look at new players who would soon enough be part of his first team. Kane was especially keen to make the most of his opportunities, burying a 20-yarder at home against Besiktas on his way to becoming first choice.
There was something slightly haphazard or even comical about Spurs’ campaign. When they travelled to Besiktas — playing in the Ataturk Stadium because Besiktas’ new stadium was under construction — the floodlights kept failing, forcing the players off the field. When Spurs hosted Asteras Tripolis, fans were treated to one of the most memorable European nights of recent years. Kane scored a hat-trick and ended up in goal after Lloris was sent off. Lamela scored a rabona (his first of two for Spurs) that no one who was there will ever forget.
But this campaign ended just like 2012-13: unpicked by Salah in the knockout rounds (this time with Fiorentina), with Spurs looking flat and exhausted. Fans might remember Roberto Soldado running through on goal with all the time and space in the world and messing up a pass to Nacer Chadli. Tottenham did not have the legs or the experience to compete in Europe and at home at the same time.
The following season — when their group stage started against Qarabag — they did at least get their revenge over Fiorentina, knocking them out at the last-32 stage. But it was a familiar story in the last 16, coming up against a stronger, sharper Borussia Dortmund and losing 5-1 on aggregate having rested several key players. The last European game at the old White Hart Lane ended in defeat and as Spurs stumbled at the end of their league season, finishing third in the end, it felt as if playing 10 games in Europe without even getting to the quarter-finals was the worst of both worlds.
Kevin Wimmer, Josh Onomah, Ryan Mason and Tom Carroll all started at Dortmund in 2016 (Alex Grimm/Bongarts/Getty Images)
Tottenham played as if they knew that their future was in the Champions League. They qualified for it the following season for the first time since 2010. Their first Champions League group stage campaign under Pochettino was a lesson in football at that level — they finished third and dropped back down to the Europa League.
Drawn against Gent in the last 32, Tottenham should have been big favourites. This was halfway through the 2016-17 season, when Spurs were at their peak, almost unstoppable, and were beating everyone they came up against. Maybe they thought they were too good for the Europa League at this point because they lost 1-0 in Belgium, with Dembele admitting afterwards that Gent “wanted it more than us, they were sharper, more motivated than us”. Spurs drew the return leg 2-2 after a Dele red card and were out of Europe again.
This was Spurs’ last involvement in the Europa League for three-and-a-half years. During that time, Pochettino took them to a Champions League final, a run that made their long Europa years feel very far away. But just over one year on from Madrid, they were back in it, managed by Jose Mourinho. You could be forgiven for memory-holing most of this campaign, which was played behind closed doors. What people will not forget is how it ended against Dinamo Zagreb. Spurs won the first leg 2-0 but looked frozen in the second leg in Croatia against a team whose manager had just been sentenced to prison. They lost 3-0 and were knocked out. Lloris said it was a “disgrace”, in what remains the most explosive post-game interview ever given by a Tottenham player. Mourinho was sacked four games later.
Spurs contrived to blow a 2-0 first-leg lead in Zagreb (Goran Stanzl/Getty Images)
So is it a cursed history? Or is it just a story of an identity crisis, of a club that can never quite work out how seriously they want to take this competition? At times, Spurs’ desperation to be in the Champions League has meant they have taken their eye off the ball and in doing so missed the opportunity to win a trophy that would do more for their status — and the fans’ happiness — than merely showing up in the Champions League.
And even if Tottenham do not make it all the way to Bilbao — which is 14 or even 16 games away depending on where they finish in the initial league stage — it could be an invaluable chance to look at the Spurs players of the next generation. Qarabag could eventually mean to Lucas Bergvall and Archie Gray what it did to Dele and Son nine years ago.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
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Publish date : 2024-09-24 21:28:00
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