The first meeting of Chelsea and Tottenham last year ended with a late Harry Kane equaliser, Thomas Tuchel and Antonio Conte angrily accusing each other of disrespect, and VAR Mike Dean admitting he hadn’t told referee Anthony Taylor about a red-card offence by Cristian Romero because he wanted to spare his “mate” the hassle of having to deal with it. Sky pundit Graeme Souness bestowed the game’s deathless epitaph: “Men, at it.”
As the teams prepare to face each other again tonight, the stars of that sunny August afternoon have scattered around Europe. Sky let Souness go and hired Mike Dean. Conte, seeing no worthy vehicle for his talents in the current landscape of football, has been out of work since leaving Spurs last March. Tuchel is at Bayern, where he continues to angrily accuse people of disrespect. He spent much of Saturday evening sneering at Sky Germany “experts” Didi Hamann and Lothar Matthäus, after Bayern had crushed Borussia Dortmund 4-0 thanks to a hat-trick from their new superstar, Harry Kane.
With 15 goals and five assists in his first 10 league matches, Kane is the most productive forward in Europe by far. Robert Lewandowski holds the Bundesliga season scoring record with 41 goals in 2021; Kane is currently on pace for 51. His family has not yet joined him in Germany and three months after arriving in Munich he’s still living in a hotel, but on the field he is living the dream.
Given the standards of defending Bundesliga clubs often display in the Champions League, that might have been expected. The surprise is that the club Kane left behind are living a dream of their own.
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The last time Tottenham sold their best player to a European superclub was in 2013, when Gareth Bale joined Real Madrid. They replaced Bale with seven new signings, of whom only Christian Eriksen was a success, and the manager Andre Villas-Boas was sacked before Christmas.
This time they have made their best start to a campaign since the Double-winning season of 1960-61. The club is alive with a giddy euphoria, like a city that has been liberated after a long siege. What is going on?
Much has been said about the obvious charm and people skills of Ange Postecoglou, and nobody should underestimate the positive impact of replacing an emotional terrorist like Antonio Conte with a relatively normal man like the Australian.
But it’s more than just a vibe shift. Spurs also changed most of their players. Comparing the list of the 11 players who played the most league minutes for Tottenham last season to the equivalent 11 this year, the scale of the transformation becomes apparent.
Only three players – Cristian Romero, Son Heung-min and Dejan Kulusevski – appear on both lists.
Some of this is due to the integration of new signings: new keeper Guglielmo Vicario and new centre back Micky van de Ven have played every minute so far, while James Maddison is one of the six players who have started every game. Destiny Udogie, who arrived at the club this summer having been signed the previous year, is another new addition to the regular XI.
But Postecoglou has also looked at the squad left to him by Conte and come to radically different conclusions about which players should be on the pitch. The system has changed from 5-4-1 to 4-2-3-1
Of Conte’s stalwarts, Postecoglou would surely still be picking Kane if he hadn’t left. But Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, Ben Davies and Emerson Royal – all regular starters last season – are now substitutes. Ivan Perisic had also been relegated to the bench before suffering an ACL injury in September. Clement Lenglet was released back to Barcelona after his loan period.
Eric Dier and Hugo Lloris are both still at the club, but neither has played a single minute of football this season. Part of Postecoglou’s revolution has been to sideline the two longest-serving players left at the club.
Most managers would have dropped Lloris, who has been an obvious liability for a couple of seasons. Dropping Dier was a riskier call from Postecoglou. He had been, after Kane, the senior player in the old dressingroom.
Spurs look much better without him. Romero – “a rock, a winner” – is now the leader of a new-look back four alongside van de Ven, with Pedro Porro and Udogie as the first-choice fullbacks. With Vicario having made a quietly superb start – his save percentage of 82% is the best in the league and a big improvement on the 67% Lloris managed last season – Tottenham’s defending has improved even as Postecoglou has moved a player from defence into attack.
In midfield, instead of Conte’s defensively-oriented Hojbjerg-Skipp combination, Postecoglou has been picking Yves Bissouma – a player whose potential Conte never understood – and Pape Matar Sarr, who, he says, “has this great capacity to just run and provide energy in so many different areas”. With the full-backs coming into midfield when Spurs have possession, Spurs have a base to control games and allow James Maddison and the forwards to do what they do.
Certainly Postecoglou’s Spurs seem to be having a lot more fun than Mauricio Pochettino’s Chelsea, weighed down by the pressure of the gigantic spending their results have yet to justify.
On Friday, a journalist asked Postecoglou: “Would you like a billion to spend?”
“I’ve always felt, it’s not just about just spending money,” he said. “There’s always a limit to every team, right? So you can’t have 24 world-class players, that will never work, it doesn’t work, it’s been proven. The answer is to get the right chemistry in your team, in your squad, to have 24 players committed to one cause. I don’t think you can do that if you just get the 24 best players in the world. That’s a headache I definitely don’t want.”
It’s a headache Mauricio Pochettino might swap for the one he has now, which is to have a squad that is the second-most-expensive in world football, but far from being one of the best.
Like Leicester in 2015-16, Spurs don’t have the energy drain of midweek European football, they can train all week and focus on the league. Unfortunately for them and for everyone else, Manchester City are no longer anything like the club that Leicester left trailing in 2015-16; nobody seriously expects Postecoglou’s team to be able to stay with them in the title race. But to beat Boehly’s billion-pound Chelsea to the Champions League? That would be a pretty good start.
