TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR STADIUM — If you believe the hype, this is what it’s all about, Champions League football under the lights in one of the great stadiums of the world. Tottenham it would seem have it all going on, securing a win in football’s premier club competition.
Everything about the night felt freighted with importance. Both teams needed the win to reconfigure the group in their favour. Spurs all in white, Frankfurt all in black were protagonists clothed for drama, and from the north London perspective, good versus bad was a binary conclusion easily reached.
But are Spurs any good? Though the question might appear daft of a team sitting third in the Premier League and top of their Champions League group, disrespectful even to an ensemble that includes Harry Kane, Son Heung-min and a Brazilian centre forward, it did not seem out of place in the opening 15 minutes during which Spurs fell behind to a goal birthed by their own hapless defending.
Maybe they needed the certainty of direction that came with the calamity. The unconvincing, nervy, nothing of a start was knifed into a response, and at the centre of it was Kane and Son. The former played in the latter as he has a thousand times, the weight of pass, the line of sight, the gathering of the ball, the clinical finish was an echo of so many of Tottenham’s best moments in this marvellous stadium.
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Reece James gives England a World Cup scare after limping off in Chelsea's win over AC Milan11 October, 2022The second was all Kane’s own work. Quite how a fella of his dimensions and lack of pace pulls off those slaloming runs is a mystery. Perhaps the scale of his achievements, the power of reputation slows the limbs of defenders, or at least induces caution. Either way, the Frankfurt defence was anything but Eintracht in response, and when Kane went tumbling down it always looked like the referee Carlos del Cerro Grande would be off to consult the monitor and reverse his prior leniency. The penalty was pure Kane; unanswerable.
Son’s volley for the third, making an assist master of Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg after a rare visit to the byline, was a playground finish rammed home with his eyes shut. So at one with the evening was Son he could have scored with his ear lobe. Kevin Trapp earned his match fee alone with the save that denied Son a first-half treble.
It is three years since that suffocating night in Madrid when the great Pochettino ride peaked in the Champions League final against Liverpool. Despite the defeat Spurs had found empowerment, a sense that they belonged in this next level company. It was thought to presage a period in which the best stadium in the world might house the best team.
Dreams are cruel things. What we had in fact seen was a miracle playing out, a unsustainable run that defied the parsimony of the regime. Pochettino made love go a long way, but even his touchy-feely powers could not counter a non-spending ownership in the era of Chelsea and Manchester City.
The arrival of Antonio Conte was a punt that has so far defied logic and expectation. Daniel Levy has given him sufficient backing to make plausible a challenge and keep the lid on the politics. No serious agitation from within yet as Conte’s Spurs oscillate between minimalist and expansive.
Frankfurt, reduced to 10 men, were exposed as a fragile opponent lacking the depth to trouble Conte’s organised rhythms until they nicked a second four minutes from time. Kane missed a late penalty that would have cleaned up the scoreline, and Hugo Lloris made a terrific save at the close to make sure the night ended well.
And above all that the mighty Son, back to his imperious best, showed why it is possible to imagine Spurs emerging as a disruptive power in the unusual circumstances of a season split by a winter World Cup. Manchester City are already through. Liverpool were rehabilitated by Rangers in back-to-back encounters to make their passage into the knockout stage secure and Chelsea top their group with two matches remaining.
Thus are Spurs invited to make a second dash at unexpected glory in a competition that is easier to win than the Premier League. As good as they can be in flashes, the defeat to Arsenal and a City team propelled by Erling Haaland demonstrate Spurs’ shortcomings in the league setting. But in a knockout competition they have the cards to trump any should they make it all the way to Istanbul.
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