DANE DREAM BELIEVERS

Spurs spirit & genius of Eriksen make it night to remember

IT was not quite Manchester United – Roy Keane and all – on that epic night in 1999.

But for character, spirit and accomplishment, Tottenham – Christian Eriksen, Harry Kane and all – went pretty close.

On that night, United came from two goals down in Juventus territory to win by one and reach the Champions League final.

From two goals down here, Spurs have given themselves an unlikely favourite’s chance of reaching the last eight.

Not a giant step like United’s, but a small one in the direction they want to be heading, towards being a European force.

And after suffering a catastrophic start, in which Gonzalo Higuain had Juventus two-up well inside 10 minutes, to hold it together and come back with strikes from Kane and Eriksen shows this is a Spurs side with bottle as well as brilliance.

Because, don’t forget, as orders go, they didn’t come much taller than the one facing Spurs under the gaze of the Alps.

Such was Juve’s form – one goal conceded in their last 16 matches, for example – Spurs were up against the odds before a ball was kicked.

But even Mauricio Pochettino could not have expected those odds to swell so dramatically so quickly.

He could have expected Mousa Dembele to give away a free-kick, that’s one of his specialities.

Yet Pochettino’s death stare told you what he thought of Dele Alli and Ben Davies, among others, watching Higuain coast on to the Miralem Pjanic free-kick and hit a smart, on-the-spin finish. It was Davies who most strikingly symbolised Tottenham’s collective daze, not leaving it long before wiping out Federico Bernardeschi with a tackle as ill-timed as it was ill-advised.

Hugo Lloris got a hand to Higuain’s spot-kick but the weak wrist summed up as soft a Spurs start as you could imagine.

Tottenham’s response was as much to do with them discovering their composure and their strength, as it was to do with Juve dropping almost as far as the Alpine foothills.

For all but the final moments of the first half, Spurs ran the show, with the producers the usual suspects.

Eriksen was the most creative force on the pitch, Dembele settled into his roost-ruling best, and Kane never gave that Juventus wall a moment’s peace.

He should have knocked a brick out of it, but headed a sitter straight at Gianluigi Buffon, and had the keeper at full stretch with a slightly scuffed number.

But Kane never gets dispirited. Missed chances are the most fleeting of memories and when Alli put him in the clear, the striker went past Buffon as though he was a cone and rolled in yet another.

If only Serge Aurier had Kane’s calm.

Instead, in a rare Juve foray just before the interval, the full-back responded to a skinning from Douglas Costa by giving referee Felix Brych yet another no-debate penalty decision.

But Higuain reacted to some Lloris goalline kidology by blasting his hat-trick attempt against the crossbar.

Almost predictably, Eriksen hit home the enormity of that miss when he hooked a low free-kick, won by the guile of Alli, just to the side of a shoddy Juve wall to level matters with 20 minutes left.

It was no more than Spurs deserved. They protected the draw without undue alarm and can look forward to a defining night at Wembley.

This might have had nowhere near the significance of that United win at the old ground 19 years’ ago, but it was still a night for Spurs to remember.