Tottenham Hotspur: Choose your own Champions League adventure
The year is 2019. You are Mauricio Pochettino, the manager of Tottenham Hotspur, a medium-sized football club based at various locations in London. Just five matches stand between you and European glory
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The year is 2019. You are Mauricio Pochettino, the manager of Tottenham Hotspur, a medium-sized football club based at various locations in London. Never before in the 64 years of the European Cup and Champions League have Tottenham been champions of Europe. This year, they’re through to the quarter-finals for only the third time in their history. Few expect them to go much further.
But you’ve got other ideas. Even if the odds are stacked against your team, you know that in the later stages of the Champions League, it’s all about making the right choice at the right moment. Just five matches stand between your team and the ultimate glory. Go to THE START to begin your Champions League adventure. The very best of luck. You’ll need it.
The first leg of the quarter-final looms large. Manchester City, the tournament favourites and masters of the known universe, lie in wait. Ahead of the game, the big tactical question is whether Tottenham will try and take the game to City at home in the first leg, as Liverpool did last season. Do you send your team flying out of the blocks, hoping to surf a wave of noise and use the partisan home atmosphere to your advantage? Or do you keep it tight, aware that a comprehensive defeat would virtually settle the tie within 90 minutes?
To set up in an attacking formation and try to land an early blow, go to OPTION TWO. To keep things tight go to OPTION THREE.
Roared on by a capacity crowd at the gleaming new Tottenham Hotspur stadium, you set about City with relish. The first 15 minutes see a string of clear chances, with Ederson called into action a number of times. But as the first half progresses, City begin to look more secure. Shortly before half-time, Hugo Lloris rolls the ball straight to Raheem Sterling, who scores.
Worse is to come. Midway through the second half, the fancy new automatic beer taps begin to malfunction, flooding the entire stadium with craft ale. As the players struggle to find their footing on an increasingly sticky, beer-soaked pitch, Jan Vertonghen underhits a back-pass and Sergio Aguero squelches in to make it 2-0.
The second leg at the Etihad Stadium is a disappointing anticlimax, as City play out a tepid goalless draw with 100 per cent possession, consisting entirely of Ederson, Aymeric Laporte and John Stones passing the ball between them for 90 minutes.
Your Champions League adventure ends here.
Keeping 11 men behind the ball and denying City space to operate, you earn a battling 1-1 draw at your new home, an ill-tempered game characterised by a number of controversial flashpoints. City open the scoring through Leroy Sane on 51 minutes when Hugo Lloris has a wheel of cheese thrown at him from the stands. Late on, as Tottenham strive for an equaliser, a lighting rig falls from the stadium rafters, crashing down on Harry Kane just as he’s about to score.
Against the protests of the City players, the Spanish referee awards Tottenham a penalty that pundits will later describe as soft. “He’s conned the ref there,” a famous ex-Arsenal player complains on the radio. “Look how he leans forward, maximising the potential surface area for any potential lighting rig contact. He’s gone looking for that one, I’m afraid.”
Kane’s penalty earns Tottenham a battling 1-1 draw. But ahead of the second leg, Tottenham’s familiar injury crisis resurfaces. With Eric Dier, Harry Winks and Victor Wanyama all out, you’ve got a decision to make in midfield.
To play Christian Eriksen in a deeper role alongside Moussa Sissoko, go to OPTION FOUR. To play Sissoko as a single-pivot and opt for a more direct style, go to OPTION FIVE.
With Eriksen deployed alongside Sissoko in a midfield two, Tottenham have plenty of numbers behind the ball but no obvious outlet in possession. Eriksen is too deep to shape play, and on the rare occasions when Tottenham can relieve City’s relentless pressure, their only option is hopeful long balls up the pitch to Harry Kane and Son Heung-Min. City win 2-0 without breaking a sweat, and afterwards you use your press conference to plead with chairman Daniel Levy for world-class midfield reinforcements in the summer. He responds by signing Fulham’s Tom Cairney on a season-long loan, after an initial bid of £6 million for Jack Grealish is rejected in an Aston Villa club statement as “a mortal insult”.
Your Champions League adventure ends here.
The first half-hour is ugly viewing. Spurs are overrun in midfield, and only the brilliance of Hugo Lloris keeps the game scoreless. Then, in the second half, something strange happens. After a Fernandinho shot from distance is charged down - City’s 33rd shot of the game - Moussa Sissoko finds himself with the ball on the edge of his own area. Ignoring your entreaties from the touchline, he evades two tackles with a silky turn, gallops into the City half, trips over the ball, wins it back again, and then smashes in a 25-yard screamer that he will later admit sheepishly to Des Kelly on BT Sport was actually an attempted back-heel.
You’re through to the semi-finals. Go to OPTION SIX.
The future of Christian Eriksen dominates the build-up to the semi-final against Juventus, who try to unsettle you by launching an audacious £100 million bid for the player in the week of the game. Despite a frank and honest chat in your office where you try and convince him to stay using your special purple energy crystals, Eriksen makes it clear he wants to leave. Which, with the continuing injury crisis in midfield, leaves you a dilemma. Can you afford to leave your most creative player out of your biggest match of the season? Or do the risks of playing Eriksen outweigh the potential benefits?
To pick Eriksen, go to OPTION SEVEN. To leave him out, go to OPTION EIGHT.
Distracted and disinterested, Tottenham slip to a crushing 4-1 defeat at home, thanks to a Cristiano Ronaldo wonder-strike and a hat-trick of own goals from Eric Dier. But the final humiliation comes in the second leg at the Allianz Stadium, when Eriksen - left out of the travelling squad - somehow emerges at the half-time break in a Juventus shirt, doing keepie-uppies for the delighted crowd and getting his photo taken with Andrea Agnelli and Pavel Nedved. Eriksen will end up spending four injury-plagued seasons at Juventus, making just 71 appearances, 48 of them as a substitute, before signing for Everton.
Your Champions League adventure ends here.
With Eriksen sulking on the sidelines, Tottenham grind out a thrilling 2-1 victory in Turin, with teenager Oliver Skipp playing the game of his life in a midfield anchor role. Completing all 108 of his passes, and comprehensively getting the better of Miralem Pjanic and Blaise Matuidi in the Juventus midfield, the following morning’s Gazzetta dello Sport hails ‘Il Maestro Skipp’ on its front page, urging Juventus to drop their interest in Eriksen and sign Skipp instead. Skipp is signed in a hasty swap deal with Moises Kean, and will end up spending two seasons at Juventus, making just 14 appearances, 10 of them as a substitute, before signing for Bournemouth.
Improbably, impossibly, Tottenham have reached the first Champions League final in their history. Go to OPTION NINE.
On the morning of June 1, North Korean troops cross the 38th parallel and launch a surprise land and air assault on South Korean territory. As international leaders line up to condemn the unprovoked attack, a state of emergency is immediately declared in South Korea, with all males under the age of 40 - including those living abroad - immediately conscripted into the national defence forces.
When Tottenham’s players gather for breakfast in their Madrid hotel ahead of the Champions League final against Barcelona, one player is conspicuous by his absence. A club official is quickly despatched to Son Heung-Min’s room, and finds it completely empty except for a plate of discarded, half-eaten room service tagliatelle. On closer inspection, however, the tagliatelle appears to have been arranged in a deliberate pattern. When the sauce is cleared away and the plate rotated, clearly written in pasta are the words: “Send help.”
With Harry Kane out injured after a recurrence of his freak lighting rig injury, you’ve got a choice to make.
To play Fernando Llorente up front, go to OPTION TEN. To launch a daring rescue mission against Korean special forces hours before the Champions League final, go to OPTION ELEVEN.
Deprived of your two leading goalscorers, one by infrastructure collapse and one by military rendition, you urge your players to go out and win the Champions League for their fallen comrades. You get an encouraging start, too. Young Oliver Skipp is having a barnstorming game in his farewell appearance before joining Juventus. Llorente has a couple of early sights of goal, even managing to put one of them the right side of the corner flag, and earning a warm round of applause from the bench.
But perhaps the exertions of the last few weeks have eventually begun to catch up with you. As Tottenham begin to tire, Barcelona pull decisively clear in the second half, sealing a 3-0 victory with a wonderful goal from Lionel Messi, chipping Hugo Lloris from eight yards, running around the goalkeeper and heading the ball in himself. After the game, you earn a six-match touchline ban and a €100,000 fine from Uefa for punching an interviewer who asks you whether you still need a trophy to prove yourself at Spurs.
The following morning, Son Heung-Min is paraded on state television wearing a Bayern Munich shirt and shaking Uli Hoeness warmly by the hand. So it wasn’t Korean special forces after all.
Your Champions League adventure ends here.
Immediately, you call off the planned pre-match walk and start drawing up a battle-plan. Judging by the temperature of the still-tepid soup, you calculate Son can’t have been gone for more than an hour or so. Furthermore, you’re fairly certain that due to the heightened security measures in place, the kidnappers won’t try to make their escape by air, but by land or sea. You call up a few Espanyol contacts and ask them to guard the ports on the east coast.
Meanwhile, you and the players scour the local countryside for signs of overland escape. Ben Davies’s lung-busting stamina makes him a natural candidate as an advance scout, and before long he has returned, reporting unusual tyre tracks in a field to the north.
The tyre tracks lead up into the mountains. After several miles of walking, which is enough for Erik Lamela to get injured again, you come across a large deserted hacienda, almost obscured by trees. Entering the main atrium, an extraordinary sight greets you. The captors are nowhere to be seen, but sitting around are at least 30 men in Tottenham training gear, every single one of them the exact spitting image of Son Heung-Min.
Upon seeing you, they all leap to their feet and plead to be rescued. Slowly, it begins to dawn on you what’s happened. Those weren’t South Korean special forces infiltrating your team hotel but North Korean: trying to spirit away their enemy’s most famous athlete before he could return to boost their morale. What’s more, the assailants have hidden the real Son in a room of lookalikes in order to confound any rescue attempt. Some of the likenesses are better than others, but the basic problem remains: you’ve not got the faintest idea which of these men is the real Son.
But just as you’re cursing your predicament, Kieran Trippier’s hand shoots up. “Boss, I’ve got an idea,” he says. All of a sudden, Dele Alli’s hand shoots up as well. “Boss, me too,” he says.
In the distance, you can hear the faint rumbling of a 4x4 winding its way up the mountain. You realise with a sinking heart that the captors are returning, and you don’t have time to hear both ideas. Now you have a choice to make.
To hear Trippier’s suggestion, go to OPTION TWELVE. To hear Dele’s, go to OPTION THIRTEEN.
“OK, Trips,” you say. “What’s the idea to find the real Sonny?”
Trippier looks confused.
“No, I didn’t mean that, boss,” he replies. “I meant for tonight. You know how we always listen to that Argentinian music on the bus to the ground? Nothing against the Argie beats, obviously, that’s a given, but me and the lads have made a playlist what we thought might give us a bit extra for the game. Drake, J Cole, Kid Cudi, bit of reggaeton for the Spanish lads. Give it a listen before you say no, eh?”
Just as you’re about to admonish him, the doors burst open and soldiers with assault rifles flood the compound, surrounding you in seconds. Within hours, the entire Tottenham squad has been airlifted out of the country and put to work in a North Korean labour camp. Most of the players describe it as a welcome respite from your pre-season fitness sessions.
Your Champions League adventure (and freedom) ends here.
“OK, Dele,” you say. “What’s the plan?”
“Right, boss,” he says. “Now you see, I was thinking a quick football skills challenge. But we don’t have time for that, and besides we don’t have a ball. Then I thought of something else. Watch.”
He walks over to the nearest Son lookalike and holds out a hand. The Son impostor stares at him blankly. Dele moves on to the next and holds out his hand. Same response. And the next, and the next, and the next. Eventually, when he’s gone through virtually the entire room and you’re wondering what on earth he’s up to, Dele holds out his hand to yet another Son lookalike, who instinctively slaps it twice, brushes it with the back of his hand, holds out his last two fingers, and then goes in for the fist-bump.
“Sonny!” the squad cry out in unison, running over to embrace their kidnapped winger. Standing at the edge of the huddle, you give a wry smile. Those stupid goal celebration handshakes. Who knew that one day they would save you all?
Relieved and overjoyed, you rush to the stadium with barely enough time to get changed and warm up. But fuelled by the adrenalin of your rescue mission, and with Son at the vanguard of an attacking 4-4-2 formation, you take the final by the scruff of its neck. Lucas Moura smashes the ball in from close range to put you 1-0 up. With 15 minutes remaining, Toby Alderweireld launches a quick counter-attack, Son sprints around the outside of the tiring Gerard Pique and slides the ball home from a tight angle. Tottenham are 2-0 up, and on the brink of the most unlikely Champions League triumph of recent years.
There are just seconds of normal time remaining when you hear a strange rumbling noise. Unbeknown to you or the players, your daring mountain rescue of Son has had grave repercussions on the Korean peninsula. Outraged by your act of sabotage, the Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un has launched an immediate missile strike on the Wanda Metropolitano, and indeed most of the known world. The last thing you see before the entire planet is consumed in a giant fireball is the fourth official raising his board to show four minutes of injury time. That’s how close you were. That’s how close we all were.
Your Champions League adventure, and all of humanity, ends here.
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