Spurs falter in pitch battle
IT WAS a match which, thanks to Riyad Mahrez in the sixth minute, Manchester City won and Tottenham lost.
More worrying, though, were the 34,000 empty seats which proved this Premier-League muddle of a fixture was anything but a draw.
Instead, the full horror of the occasion was spelt out by the three giant letters still clearly visible in the centre-circle of the once-hallowed turf: “New Footballing Low”.
How could the beautiful game – the English game – have come to this?
Two of the best teams in what is supposed to be the greatest league in the world doing battle on a hawked-out venue still pitted with the hideous scars of the studs and thuds of an NFL encounter just 24 hours earlier.
In what is for now, whether we want it to be or not, our national stadium owned by the guardians of the sport in this country.
Perhaps it was Spurs’ arrogance in thinking the new White Hart Lane could be built so quickly and without hitch.
Should the Premier League have given them carte blanche to extend their exile into the NFL season in the first place? Maybe Manchester City could have switched the game to the Etihad instead. So many selfinterests.
For all the money that has been chased to arrive at this scenario, the English game is today the poorer for it.
After all, this was billed as a title-race clash – albeit metaphorically too, it was being contested on anything but a level playing field.
Mauricio Pochettino was always the financial David to Pep Guardiola’s Goliath when the two were cutting their coaching teeth in the city of Barcelona – the former with Espanyol. And so too in the Premier League.
Since the Argentine arrived at Tottenham, the net spend of the club has been just £29million compared to Manchester City’s £518m outlay – much of it under their current manager.
For all the effervescent sparkle of their attractive brand, Tottenham are a club trying to do things on the cheap – prudently, some might say.
But when cutting corners, the veneer is always in danger of coming loose.
Having to play such a prestigious home game on a scrappy patch of borrowed land in front of swathes of empty seats that should have been occupied by the fans who have instead become disenfranchised by repeated delays over the building of the new stadium is an embarrassment the club are just going to have to weather.
It meant that what should have been a thrilling exhibition of some of the best passing football in the Premier League instead became an oldfashioned mud-and-thunder battle which could only be contested on English soil however foreign the markings.
Not that the state of the pitch could be to blame for the opening goal after just six minutes.
Ederson’s long clearance arced through the air onto the head of Kieran Trippier 60 yards away and the England full-back simply misjudged his flick header back to his own goalkeeper.
Sterling ran onto the ball like one of the greyhounds who used to race here at Wembley in the days the pitch really was bad, cut the ball back and Riyad Mahrez found the back of the net with a studied sidefoot finish.
Tottenham needed to find a response and three minutes later Harry Kane unleashed a shot from 26.5 yards – thank you NFL markings – but it flew narrowly over the bar.
Toby Alderweireld’s header, from a Trippier corner, was straight into the arms of Ederson.
Key passes tended to go awry at both ends until close to the half-hour mark when the ball bobbled around the Spurs area only to be fed out to Mahrez, whose arrowed shot had to be clawed away from his near post by Hugo Lloris.
Yet Tottenham still should have gone into the break level.
Erik Lamela put Kane clear but the Tottenham captain pushed the ball too far forward and Ederson was out quickly with the sort of uncompromising block worthy of any defensive lineman. Teed up by Bernardo Silva, David