Nou Camp miracle Moura seals last-16 spot for Spurs as Pochettino hails ‘massive’ result
The miracle of Barcelona was not quite as Mauricio Pochettino would have imagined it at his most hopeful, although when the Tottenham Hotspur manager returned to the pitch after the game and saluted his club’s travelling fans, none of that will have mattered.
His team had not come to the Nou Camp and won, as only Liverpool have done in the history of English teams visiting this stadium, and they had not even faced Lionel Messi at his full, unstoppable best. They had fought and probed and hung on in there to grind down an opponent until, with five minutes of regulation time remaining, the substitute Lucas Moura scored the critical equaliser.
And, in the meantime, Spurs, the club that often wonder at their misfortune, that old curse of incompetence that once saw Champions League qualification squandered over a pre-match meal, were the beneficiaries of something often absent in their recent history: a stroke of luck.
At San Siro, Inter Milan failed to beat PSV Eindhoven, the last-place team in Group B, and so when Moura’s equaliser levelled it on points, it was Spurs with the better head-to-head who finished second and qualified for the Champions League knockout stages.
Spurs fought their way back from an outrageous seventh minute goal from Ousmane Dembele and by the end of the night, with Messi, Sergio Busquets and Philippe Coutinho together on the pitch, Spurs had clocked 51 per cent possession against the masters of keep-ball.
They had some good fortune and Coutinho struck the post once in either half but good teams can be lucky teams too and, by the end, Spurs might even have won it had Danny Rose kept his composure to score a late chance. The team that took one point from their first three games have made it into the second round with just eight points – owing so much to Pochettino; the man who keeps the show on the road at a club that have been homeless for more than a year.
It must have been a great personal vindication for him, when afterwards he was asked by the Catalan media how it is he shows such faith in young players. There was a Champions League debut for Kyle Walker-peters who recovered from his part in that early Dembele goal, and elsewhere the likes of Harry Kane, Harry Winks and Dele Alli were crucial.
He ended his press conference with a tribute to the Spurs chairman, Daniel Levy, and the board of a club that he said are working to open “the best stadium in the world”. It goes without saying that for owners, chairmen and chief executives, that kind of talk is music to the ears. A successful manager prepared to shoulder the responsibility in the bad times, and spread the credit in the good, is the kind of manager every hyper-scrutinised club board wants in charge.
Pochettino denied that he had ever described the task facing Spurs to qualify as “mission impossible” although, looking back, he got close enough after the draw with PSV on match day three. From that moment he resisted the temptation to complain and blame others, he worked with the players at his disposal and now it seems that the new White Hart Lane may indeed see Champions League foot- ball this season after all. What a lesson to other coaches.
There were eight changes from the Barcelona team that dispatched Espanyol at the weekend and among those was Messi himself, the little maestro starting on the bench with his team already through to the knockout round. He came on with 64 minutes played and barely touched the ball for the next 10. Although, later, there were moments when he spun and passed and moved this was Messi in third gear.
In the place of the likes of Gerard Pique, Luis Suarez and Jordi Alba, came a team of relative youth and some inexperience. There was a
Champions League debut for the academy graduate Carles Alena, a 20-year-old Catalan who stroked the ball around in the centre of midfield like many of his predecessors. At left-back, there was a start for the 18-year-old Juan Miranda, and in the first half Barcelona were well in control.
Coutinho, only a substitute in the win over Espanyol, started in attack; Ivan Rakitic played the first half and on the right wing was Dembele. The 21-year-old Frenchman is one month younger than Walker-peters, who will never forget the moment that Moussa Sissoko’s ropy header came at him in the seventh minute.
On another day in another game, Walker-peters would have brought the awkward bouncing ball down and distributed it without any trouble. But now he was in the crosshairs of Dembele who is mesmerisingly quick – so quick there is a kind of cruelty at the way in which he makes fast players look slow and slow players look static.
He did the same to Kyle Walker playing for France in Paris last year and now it was another Kyle Walker’s turn to suffer the same fate. Dembele first forced Walker-peters off the ball, and then pushed it into an area where the Spurs man was subject to his full, raw pace.
Winks launched himself in front of what he thought was the shot, and was still sliding towards the corner flag, when Dembele switched it back onto his left foot and slotted it past Hugo Lloris.
There were two chances for Heung-min Son in the first half but it was not until the second that Spurs played higher up the pitch and asked a few more questions of Barcelona. They created openings and the best of those fell to Kane, who snatched at his shot and got under it, flaying it high and wide.
The game was flattening out, the home fans stirred briefly when Messi came on but Spurs sensed there was a goal to be had. Pochettino brought on Erik Lamela for Walker-peters after the hour and then Moura and finally Fernando Llorente. The news of an equaliser for Inter came through. Spurs pushed on and it was Kane who made the goal, crossing from the left wing for Moura to complete the remarkable turnaround.