Manchester United and Tottenham receive contrasting Champions League reality checks

Few moments in football are as jarring – as paralysing – as steadily doing well in your own league only to step up to this stage and painfully realise you’re still a level below

For all the homogeny of the Champions League, and how it has come to distil many of the game’s modern problems, something about its variety has remained fundamentally consistent through the decades.

Few moments in football are as jarring – as paralysing – as steadily doing well in your own league only to step up to this stage and painfully realise you’re still a level below.

The Champions League doesn’t just have the capacity to surprise, in that regard, but to stun. There aren’t many reality checks like it.

Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur were central to this experience this week, if from different perspectives.

Ole Gunnar Solskaer’s side realised all the feel-good momentum you can muster may not matter much against a better team with greater nous in Paris Saint-Germain. Tottenham meanwhile showed maturity beyond Borussia Dortmund and exposed the naivety of the German side.

Solskaer’s words after the 2-0 defeat to PSG could very well have come from Lucien Favre, after his own 3-0 loss at Wembley.

“This is a level up from what we’ve played against, the games we’ve had. We had a great run. We came into the game in a great frame of mind and great form but of course it was a big step up That’s the level we need to aim for.”

It’s also a level you need to learn for, and almost educate for, even if that can only happen by experience.

Player quality is obviously a significant factor, but the scales of the scorelines feel no coincidence when you consider the contrasting number of minutes these teams have spent in the Champions League.

In both cases, in matches that had feasibly been well-balanced, the sides with much more competition experience won. And convincingly.

It certainly seemed to be a significant factor in the Spurs game. That came across in everything the players said afterwards.

Spurs produced one of their great performances under Mauricio Pochettino (Getty)

Harry Winks revealed how Mauricio Pochettino had sat them through previous Champions League games to notice the little details and errors that added up to major learning experiences.

“We have been in the Champions League for the last couple of years so we are starting to learn what teams are like, any small mistake gets punished. We have to be on it from minute one to full-time so we have learned a lot, we have taken a lot on board. We have watched games back in the past of where we have lost and we have tried to take it on board.”

Vertonghen said the Real Madrid and Juventus matches last season were particular lessons, especially in staying calm. Many Spurs players felt they got ahead of themselves in that 2017-18 elimination to Juventus when they went ahead at half-time, and exposed the backline.

This was almost the opposite, but with the same core necessity. Spurs had been the weaker side in the first half, Vertonghen admitted.

“Games like last year, Real Madrid and Juventus, they help us so much, with the experience, and you know, obviously Dortmund are a better side in the first half but no one panicked at half-time, just very calm and said ‘OK, big second half for us to come up and let’s push’ and that’s what we did. We won the four previous Premier League games in a very late stage, and we kept that in mind and kept believing in our qualities and it paid off.”

The difference in maturity could also be seen in the difference rhythms of the teams. Vertonghen was surprised Dortmund never adapted to going behind.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer suffered his first loss as United caretaker (Getty)

“We run a lot and maybe expected Dortmund to attack a bit more. They didn’t. We can all see they stayed in the same position where around the halfway line, and that made it easier for us in a way, we just had one task and that was to keep attacking.

Otherwise you think, ‘oh no, they’re attacking us, just don’t concede, 1-0 is OK at the end in a Champions League tie’. The fact that we were having the ball and going forward, there was only one task for us left and that was to score the second and maybe the third.”

It all showed that, as globalised as football is becoming in the top leagues, there are still major variations to the competitions – and Champions League styles. It requires adaptation, and a greater sophistication of thinking.

Pochettino showed that, especially with the move of Vertonghen to left-back. It was a surprise, but perhaps of the type that is needed at this level to really tactically tilt things. Solskjaer was meanwhile caught out by the loss of two of his fastest players in Jesse Lingard and Anthony Martial.

His options were limited but his decision ceded initiative and space to PSG. That’s not to definitively criticise him, since this was his first big Champions League game against such a team, but that’s also the point.

Progress in this competition usually requires progress in your thinking, and some exacting experience.