Today I'm going back five years to 2017 and Tottenham's Champions League Group Stage match against the German side Borussia Dortmund. The game was played at the new Wembley Stadium because Spurs were still in the process of building themselves a new stadium to replace White Hart Lane. The attendance on the night was 67,343.
The programme for the game was in line with Tottenham's policy of issuing a "special" programme for Champions League game. In this case, "special" means that the programme was in a larger A4 format and had a special price of £5 as opposed to their standard Premier League issue which was priced at £3.50. In all other respects the programme had similar content to the usual issues so it was basically the increased size that we were paying extra for. Certainly it wasn't great value for money!
The programme cover stars for the evening were Tottenham and England's superstar goal scorer Harry Kane and Mousa Dembele. Dembele was born in Antwerp in Belgium and he played international football for that country despite his father's Malian birthplace. Dembele earned 82 Belgian caps (scoring 5 goals) between 2006-2018. Before arriving at Tottenham in 2012, Dembele had played for Beerschot in Belgium, Willem II and AZ In Holland and then for Fulham in the Premier League. Dembele gave Tottenham sterling service over seven seasons and was regarded by Mauricio Pochettino as being among the finest players he had ever worked with (and that included Diego Maradona!). In all he made 249 appearances for Spurs scoring just 10 goals but was transferred to a Chinese club following knee ligament damage in 2018.
Dortmund had qualified for the Champions League Group Stage by virtue of their third placed finish in the Bundesliga the previous season, behind Champions Bayern Munich and runners-up RB Leipzig. For their part, Spurs, in their last season at White Hart Lane, had finished second, just seven points behind champions Chelsea and didn't lose a League game at home that season. However, in advance of the game there were plenty of concerns at Tottenham's winless run in home games at Wembley. Appearing in Dortmund's side that night were Andriy Yarmolenko, Pierre-Emerick Aubamayang and Christian Pulisic, all of whom have since gone on to appear in the Premier League for West Ham United, Arsenal and Chelsea respectively.
The featured game went off like a rocket with three goals in the first 15 minutes. Heung-min Son kicked off the scoring with his seventh goal in nine games against Dortmund after just 4 minutes, running with the ball on the left from the halfway line before cutting inside and firing a blistering shot high into the net. On 11 minutes however, Dortmund were level following a fabulous curling shot scored by Yarmolenko on his debut for the club. Four minutes later and it was the turn of Harry Kane (who else?) to get in on the scoring with a replica of Son's earlier goal. 2-1 after 15 minutes and we were breathless but the game settled down and there was to be no further scoring in the first half. Early in the second half Aubamayang was denied an equaliser thanks to a very doubtful offside flag (VAR came to the Champions League in 2019) before Kane scored again in the 60th minute to put the game beyond Dortmund's reach. It finished 3-1 to Spurs but there was just time for Fernando Llorente to make his Spurs debut and for Jan Vertonghen to get himself sent off in the 90th minute following a rather harsh red card when his trailing arm connected with the face of Dortmund substitute Mario Gotze. Incredibly Dortmund had enjoyed 68% possession in the match and had looked impressive throughout before being well beaten.
Spurs performed well in the Champions League that season and went on to win a Group that also contained Real Madrid before succumbing to Juventus in the Round of 16. Dortmund's Champions League experience was a disaster however and they picked up just two points from two draws in their six Group Stage games. Finishing third in the Group, Dortmund were transferred into the Europa League where they were eventually eliminated in the Round of 16 by fellow German side RB Leipzig.
CRB Match No. 2172
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