Postecoglou fires Spurs into Europa League semi-finals to keep trophy promise alive

It says something about the sheer scale of the nonsense occurring elsewhere in Europe this week that Tottenham reaching the Europa League semi-finals via a controlled and relentlessly serious 90-minute performance, delivering a clean sheet at the home of the third best team in Germany, might barely scrape into the top five of unlikely occurrences.

But it’s important we don’t let the utter nonsense everywhere else distract us from the sheer unlikelihood of this.

Spurs rightly considered themselves unlucky to head to Frankfurt level in the tie after dominating the last hour of the first game at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

There was to be no such dominance here, but what there was in its place was something even more unexpected. The kind of professional, grown-up, uncomplicated and whole-hearted performance we genuinely didn’t think this team or indeed manager any longer had in them.

Only deep into injury-time, when Cristian Romero launched into an entirely unnecessary lunging tackle to hand Eintracht Frankfurt one last chance did they even hint at being even a little bit Spurs about it.

There were heroes all over the pitch for a team enduring a truly miserable season yet one that now, improbably and incongruously, sees them two games against a Norwegian team away from a place in the Europa League final.

If the final of this thing actually does end up being Spurs against Manchester United, then an entire continent should be looking at the floor in uncomfortable embarrassment.

How, on another night of absurd drama around Europe, do we end up with Ange Postecoglou’s Spurs looking like the grown-ups in the room? Like the sensible team getting the job done? What weird portal have we all gone through to find ourselves here?

When Spurs fell behind early in the first leg, apparently caught completely unawares by the Bundesliga’s best counter-attacking team scoring on the counter-attack, it was impossible to even conceive of the idea that it might be the Germans’ last goal of the tie. A Spurs comeback couldn’t be ruled out because Spursiness has always been a two-way street, but the idea that they would do it by grinding back to prevail 2-1 would have been considered the ramblings of a crazy person. And rightly so.

We will hold our hands up and admit we just didn’t see enough Spurs players in this team capable of delivering this kind of performance. Sure, there were moments of luck ridden along the way, but only really in the closing minutes when Frankfurt threw caution to the wind did Spurs’ defence look like it might behave the way it is generally expected to behave because it’s how it generally does behave.

It’s understandably clear that Spurs are no longer putting full effort into the Premier League games that clutter their Europa League schedule with their irrelevant frippery, but even so the contrast between this effort and the abject surrender at Wolves at the weekend was astonishing.

Even allowing for the vast gulf in importance, it was hard to square the sight of that team with the one that fought for and generally won everything here.

It was not perfect. How could it be? This is the 15th best team in England trying to reach a European semi-final. You wouldn’t expect perfection. But it was pretty bloody good.

It’s been uncomfortably obvious in recent weeks that Spurs’ problems – which all remain, by the way – were not going to be solved simply by the return of their many injured players. There has been no marked overall improvement in performance, effort or results.

But on a night when all those players stepped up it was a reminder, if it were needed, that this group of players – and indeed their manager – have let themselves down so badly to be where they are domestically.

The player whose return feels most significant is Micky van de Ven. Not because he’s the best player Spurs have missed, but because he’s the one most capable of covering for their collective flaws. Even in this fine overall effort they would still most likely have crashed out with anyone else in his position.

More than once he saved a situation that left you unsure which to marvel at first; the fact van de Ven is capable of salvaging those messes or the fact Spurs have got themselves in such a tangle in the first place.

What Spurs showed here, though, as they did in the first leg, was an ability to learn and grow. It has been painfully lacking in their football for the last year-and-a-half. When it looked in the early stages as if the defence might be overrun, Pedro Porro and Destiny Udogie slightly cut down their attacking and underlapping tendencies from full-back. Not completely, but enough.

It was shrewd play against a team that poses serious danger in attack but will always give you chances at the back. Lord knows if there’s one thing Spurs should be able to recognise and understand, it’s that.

Rodrigo Bentancur and Lucas Bergvall were superb in midfield, an area where Spurs have so often been overwhelmed and overrun this season. James Maddison was having a fine game until it was rudely cut short by Kaua Santos minutes before the half-time break.

It was the decisive moment in the game, though. After a genuinely absurd amount of time had passed, it was at last agreed that one of the most obvious penalties in the history of penalties was indeed a penalty. Dominic Solanke, without a goal in three months, converted it with calm authority.

Solanke faces the same problem as all strikers will at Spurs for the foreseeable future with the impossibly unfair Harry Kane comparisons. But here he gave the sort of selfless all-round centre-forward’s performance that Kane himself produced so often in his Spurs years and which vast numbers of people are only acknowledging now he’s in Munich.

Spurs enjoyed moments of good fortune here, without doubt. Calmer Frankfurt heads may well have at least taken this to extra-time, and there’s no doubt it took the home side the longest time to recover any kind of equilibrium at all after losing chief string-puller Mario Gotze to a hamstring injury midway through the first half.

Ange Postecoglou may allow himself a wry chuckle at the sight of a match turning decisively his way on the back of a key player suffering hamstring twang.

Sad as it is to say, Son Heung-min being ruled out by injury for this game may sit within ‘blessing in disguise’ territory, with Mathys Tel’s greater drive and energy of more value here than Son’s grand yet rapidly waning talents.

But while the players delivered in spades, this was always a night that was going to be about Postecoglou.

Nothing he could do in one game could repair the damage of a season gone so unthinkably bad. But three more games? That yet might.

Click here to read article