Today I'm going back five years to 2017 and Tottenham's Europa League Round of 32, 2nd Leg game against KAA Gent of Belgium played at Wembley Stadium due to the ongoing construction works at Tottenham's forthcoming new home. The game was played in front of a sell out crowd of 80,465, the majority of whom would go home disappointed at the end of the evening.
Koninklijke Atletiek Associatie Gent are a long established football club founded in 1900. In fact their history goes back even further than that as the original club can be traced back to the formation of a gymnastics club in 1864. The club seems to be known by a wide variety of names. KAA Gent translates in English as Royal Athletic Association Ghent but was originally known as La Gantoise and is still referred to by that name in the French speaking part of Belgium. The change to KAA Gent came in 1971 and the club is nicknamed De Buffalo's (yes, the Buffalos) which apparently refers to the visit of Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show to the city in the early 1900's (that's a bit random isn't it?). The club's badge, perhaps disappointingly shows no sign of a Buffalo but, instead, carries the profile of a Red Indian chief in full headdress to continue with the Wild West theme. Yee har!
The programme cover star, no doubt selected by the editor to show the Belgians that Spurs had stolen "one of their own", is, of course, Toby Alderweireld. Surprisingly the opportunity to also show a picture of Tottenham's other Belgian, Jan Vertonghen, had been missed. It wasn't Tottenham's only miss that evening. In total, Alderweireld made 243 appearances for Spurs scoring 9 goals before being surprisingly transferred to Al-Duhail of Qatar last summer. Perhaps he wanted some in depth preparation for the forthcoming World Cup to be held in Qatar later this year? Alderweireld has already made 118 appearances for Belgium scoring 5 goals.
Spurs only found themselves in the Europa League that season following a disappointing UEFA Champions League Group Stage in which they had come third behind Group winners Monaco and runners up Bayer Leverkusen having only taken a single point in four games against the two qualifiers for the Champions League knockout phase. The prize, if it can be called that, for third place in the Champions League Group stage was to be parachuted into the last 32 of the Europa League competition. The naming convention for the knockout stages of international football competitions seems to have taken on a very American style in recent years. Gone are old fashioned names such as "First Round" and "Second Round" and in have come "Round of 32" and "Round of 16" before the more usual Quarter Final and Semi-Final arrive. If I'm honest, I think I prefer the new approach as it better conveys where you actually are in the competition as compared to "First Round". I suppose we could have an "Eighth Round" and even a "Sixteenth Round" but I think I prefer Round of 16 and Round of 32 instead.
Anyway, Spurs were at least still in European competition but it didn't last for much longer. It seems these days that the Champions League is the be all and end all of European competition for many clubs and their fans. Competing in the Europa League or even, God forbid, the new fangled Europa Conference, is regarded as a failure and fans have been known to mock the opposition by singing "Thursday nights, Channel 4" if they found themselves in the Europa League. For sure the money sloshing round in the Champions League is monumental but, for me, the opportunity to win a European trophy is still important, especially if, like Spurs, you've won bugger all for years and years.
Spurs had already lost the away leg against Gent 1-0 but were expected to overcome the Belgians in the return and things got off to a good start with a superbly taken goal by Christian Eriksen after 10 minutes. When Harry Kane headed home a goal ten minutes later, you could have been forgiven for thinking that Spurs had wrapped things up but, no, this was at the wrong end and his own goal restored the Belgians aggregate lead as well as giving them a precious away goal. Possibly the decisive moment of the match came in the 39th minute when a disgraceful over the top lunge by Dele Alli produced a straight red card from the referee for which he could have had no complaints and, from that moment, 10-man Tottenham were up against it. On the hour mark however Victor Wanyama fired home Tottenham's second to make the aggregate score 2-2. All hope was however extinguished in the 82nd minute when Gent's scorer from the 1st Leg executed the winner in the 2nd Leg, Jeremy Perbet making it 2-2 on the night and 3-2 on aggregate. Spurs were out of Europe for another season. Gent themselves were eliminated in the very next round, the Round of 16, by their Belgian rivals Genk, Surely every Gent versus Genk fixture must be a commentator's nightmare in Begium? The Europa League that season was won by Manchester United who beat Ajax of Amsterdam 2-0 in the Final in Sweden.
CRB Match No. 2138
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