SOCCER: CHAMPIONS LEAGUE:WHEN A club exits the Champions League there is the tendency to search souls, conduct postmortems and reassess blueprints. For Tottenham Hotspur, who are not yet out of Europe's elite competition but have surely seen the die cast following the 4-0 defeat at Real Madrid in the quarter-final first leg, the key is continuity.
Harry Redknapp, the manager, had excuses at his fingertips for Tuesday night’s thumping loss, chief among them the reckless 15th-minute dismissal of Peter Crouch. There was also Aaron Lennon’s last-minute sick note, which led to Jermaine Jenas’s hasty promotion to the starting line-up and, in the fourth minute, it was the latter who lost Emmanuel Adebayor for the opening goal.
Injuries, with players lacking full fitness and beginning to show signs of the season’s stresses, are also bothering Redknapp. But, as he pointed out, the bottom line is that Real Madrid are a bigger and stronger club. “If you can buy Cristiano Ronaldo and people of that quality you have always got a chance,” he said, with no little understatement. “We can’t afford to buy players like that. We can’t compete with people like that. It’s difficult, impossible.”
Tottenham have enjoyed a thrilling first campaign in the Champions League and it is doubtful that too many of their supporters would have refused to sign up for a quarter-final finish back in August, particularly when the team trailed Young Boys 3-0 in the play-off round. There is no shame in losing to the nine-time champions, after all.
And despite a series of wobbles, Tottenham still sit fifth in the Premier League and within striking distance of another top-four finish. Once again, the trip to Manchester City in May could prove decisive.
William Gallas was one of several Tottenham players to highlight the need to hold the collective nerve now and point out that there remains a pot of gold on offer at the end of the season. “We have to be strong,” he said. “We play Stoke on Saturday and it’s a game that we have to win if we want to qualify for next season’s Champions League. We can’t afford to draw. We have lost too many points at home already. We have to start putting teams like Stoke away.”
Matters are delicately and tantalisingly poised. Were Tottenham to finish in the top four, they would appear set fair to consolidate. But fall short, and Redknapp would have to work harder to keep other clubs from picking off his star players, namely Gareth Bale and Luka Modric. Rafael van der Vaart no longer seems like a prize asset. Redknapp noted on Monday that once you lose one big name, then others want to follow.
A penny for van der Vaart’s thoughts would be worth the investment after he was substituted yet again, and on a high-profile return to face his former club. Bale’s situation is the most intriguing. He has enjoyed the Champions League and he is determined to continue playing in it. It is also known that a clutch of clubs who could offer him the platform would be eager to sign him.
As for the Bernabeu thumping, the Spurs goalkeeper Heurelho Gomes said that Crouch had “said sorry to everyone at half-time” and the specifics of Lennon’s withdrawal were a hot topic. The players’ focus for now, though, is Stoke City at home.
Guardian Service
