Europa Conference League Group G
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Tottenham
Admission: £25.00
Programme: £3.50
Attendance: 36,312
After aborting an attempt to visit the Tottenham Hotspur stadium for a women's game in September when an opportunity arose to visit The Oval for a day at the cricket watching England against India, I then decided that a Europa Conference League game would be the next decent available opportunity. This game fitted in well with when I planned to take some time off from work anyway.
The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, built partly on the site of the former White Hart Lane stadium, was opened in 2019 at an overall cost of an eye-watering £1 billion, but it has to be said it is a mightly impressive stadium, arguably more than a match for any other in the country, including Wembley Stadium, Situated just a five minute walk from the nearest train station, White Hart Lane, the Stadium rises impressively above the surroinding housing, with a very attractive modern design and fascia, and various electronic graphics around the perimeter catching the eye at night time. Before entering the stadium itself, the Tottenham Experience - basically the club megastore - is a worth a visit in itself for its size and impressive range of merchandise available - it is certainly by far the largest I have come across on my travels. Entrance to the stadium is gained by having one's ticket scanned, before walking up steps to the perimeter concourse outside the stadium, passing through airport style body scanners, with the opportunity to linger in an open area with some retail outlets available, before passing into the stadium itself by self-scanning one's ticket at a turnstile. Inside the concourses are relatively roomy and spacious, intelligently designed with each of the four levels having stepped balconies, giving a nice feeling of air and space, along with views out of the stadium. There are certainly plenty of refreshment outlets, and pricing was surprisingly reasonable, with pints of Amstel at £4.70. The seating area is faultless, with comfortable seating, plemty of room and elevation between seats and rows, completely unobstructed views of the action, and the design of the stadium ensures that the acoustics are excellent,and although the stadium is a continuous bowl, there are four distinct stands. The North and South Stands are both huge, single tier stands, whilst the East and West Stands have four tiers. The South Stand, where I was seated this evening, houses the most passionate home support, whilst the visitors are allocated the lower tier of the north-eastern corner of the stadium. There are big screens in each corner of the ground, although surprisingly only live action is shown on them during the match, no replays or team line-ups.
It has been a turbulent season for Tottenham Hotspur so far this season. Following the sacking of Jose Mourinho towards the end of last season, various attempts to land a big name replacement failed over the summer, and eventually settled on the appointment of former Wolves manager Nuno Espirito Santo. It smacked of a panic appointment, and more importantly the wrong appointment, and as nice a guy as he is, it was no surprise whatsoever to me that the appointment proved unsuccessful, culminating in a limp 0-3 home defeat to an out of form Manchester United on Sunday, which brought about, what seems to be the way for Spurs these days, a messy way of handling Nuno being shown the door on Monday. Their plight certainly has not been helped with the saga of Harry Kane, who was seemingly forced to honour his contract this summer despite making it abundently clear that his heart was no longer in it in Spurs, and as a result, Kane has been a long way short of his best so far this season, to put it mildly. However, the increasinly toxic mood at Spurs has been lifted since the appointment of former Italy, Chelsea and Inter Milan manager Antonio Conte on Tuesday. In the league, Tottenham were in ninth place, following five wins and five defeats from their opening ten league games. In this Europa Conference League competition, Spurs have plenty of work to do to progress to the next stage. Fielding mostly squad players, a 2-2 draw away at French side Rennes, followed by a 5-1 home victory against Slovenian side NS Mura, and finally a 0-1 defeat away to this evening's visitors has left them in third place in the group, two points behind Vitesse Arnhem and three points behind Rennes. In their group games, Vitesse won 0-2 at NS Mura, before losing 1-2 at home to Rennes, and then the 1-0 victory against Spurs a fortnight ago. In the Dutch Eredivise, Vitesse were in fifth place, and were in reasonably good form, winning three of their last four league games, plus the victory over Spurs.
In this new, tertiary competition introduced by UEFA, Tottenham have been taking the opportunity to field fringe players in their games so far, indeed in the reverse fixture of tonight's game, Nuno Espirito Santo changed all eleven players compared to his Premier League line-up, and was duly punished that night. So when I booked my ticket over a week ago, I did fear that the atmosphere would be very low key, and that I would be watching mostly fringe players. But, after the good news that Antonio Conte's work permit formalities had been completed in time for his to take his place in the dugout this evening, to certainly increase the feel-good factor around the place, it was also really pleasing when I heard the team line-ups and found that all of Spurs' star players - Harry Kane, Son Heung Min, Hugo Lloris and Lucas Moura, amongst others, would be taking the field from the start this evening.
On a cool but dry evening, this turned out to be one of the more entertaining, dramatic and unpredictable games I have watched in a long time. With half an hour on the clock, it looked like game over, and that the scoreline might turn out to be rather ugly for Vitesse. With just over a minute on the clock, Heung Min Son saw a cross shot deflect off the keeper before being hacked away by defender Bazoer. But in the 14th minute, Son did open the scoring, after an initial shot by Lucas Moura was parried by the keeper, and the loose ball ended up at Son's feet, and from an angle he drilled the ball home, with a defender on the line just unable to get meaningful contact on the ball to clear. And on 22 minutes, Spurs made it 2-0, Lucas Moura running onto a throughball by Harry Kane and clear of the defence, and he showed good composure to run on and eventually roll the ball past the keeper. And in the 28th minutes, it was looking like game over already when Ben Davies crossed from the left and Kane managed to pressure defender Jacob Rasmussen to bundle the ball just over the line, just before he could clear the ball. But Vitesse were not looking a bad outfit coming forward at least, and on 31 minutes, Sondre Tronstad hit a lovely shot from a slight angle 25 yards out, forcing Hugo Lloris into an excellent flying save to prevent the ball finding the top corner, but from the resultant corner, Rasmussen redeemed himself with a bullet header to send the ball just inside the right hand post. And in the 39th minute, all of a sudden Vitesse were right back in the game when they pulled another goal back. After Moura gave the ball away on the left wing, Yann Gbobo laid the ball off to Matus Rebo, and he cooly curled the ball low beyond Lloris' dive and inside the far post. 3-2 was how it remained at the break following a thoroughly entertaining half of football , although it was disappointing to witness some prolonged crowd trouble in the away section, which was eventually quelled by the stewards.
The second half started with the visitors dominating possession, and whilst not creating that many goalscoring chances, they did force Lloris into another excellent flying save. But their chances of pulling off a remarkable comeback increased on 59 minutes when Spurs were reduced to ten men, when Cristian Romero was shown a second yellow card and then a red for hauling down Vitesse subsitute Lois Openda as he tried to spin away and clear. But the visitors couldn't take advantage of having an extra man, and they lost that advantage on 80 minutes, when Danilho Doekhi was also shown a second yellow card for grabbing Kane and hauling him down to the ground. And finally it looked like Vitesse's chance of a remarkable comeback was extinguished on 84 minutes when their keeper Markus Schubert came racing out of his area to close down Emerson Royal, and blocked Royal's attempted long range shot with his forearm, resulting in a straight red card for the keeper. Down to nine men, the game was up for the visitors, and Spurs came close to making absolutely sure in the third of five minutes of added on time, when Giovanni Lo Celso received the ball all alone at the edge of the area, but his shot was well parried by the sub keeper.
So, it was Spurs who claimed the win which helped them rise above Vitesse into second place in the group, three points behind leaders Rennes, who they play in the final group game in early December. This was a thrilling game to watch, as a neutral at least, and credit to Vitesse who looked a decent outfit going forward, but it is fair to say that both sides were extremely shaky at the back, and certainly Antonio Conte has much work to do to get Spurs functioning as a solid outfit and challenging for honours.
Match highlights can be viewed by clicking here
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