Ange Postecoglou and a Spurs win that could change perceptions more than any other

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Some football matches are elevated from others. They carry a significance beyond themselves.

The stakes of Tottenham’s win in Frankfurt on Thursday night were obvious from the outset. Everyone knows the deal with a European quarter-final second leg. These are the nights you wait years for. No one needed to be told this was a big game.

And yet even this 1-0 win, even the progress to the semi-final alone, the tickets up into the Arctic Circle, the sense of Bilbao shimmering in the distance, all of this exists alongside something less physical but more profound. Namely, a resurrection of the vibes of Tottenham Hotspur and Ange Postecoglou, before Easter weekend had even begun.

This was a win that transforms perception and flips the narrative, more than any other game during his tenure. Postecoglou insisted afterwards that he was “the same manager” on Thursday night as he was on Wednesday. He said that people should not be persuaded one way or the other by the result of one game. But at the same time, Postecoglou will know as well as anyone that football is a reductive world. People are fickle. Big judgements are drawn from contingent events, not least tightly-contested two-legged European ties that could have gone either way (just don’t think for too long about that Rasmus Kristensen chance near the end).

Postecoglou celebrates victory over Frankfurt on Thursday evening (Crystal Pix/Getty Images)

Postecoglou will also know that he was approaching the narrative terminus before kick-off. Tottenham’s disastrous league campaign has meant that the cups, and specifically the Europa League, have been his lifeline. But that lifeline is also a tightrope. One missed step and Spurs would have no safety net. Had they been knocked out on Thursday night they would have nothing to show for their season beyond 17 league defeats and counting. Postecoglou would have been a lame duck facing the fans on Monday night. It might even have been merciful to put him out of his misery.

But now? Postecoglou is two games from Spurs’ first European final since 2019. He is three games from Tottenham’s first European trophy since 1984. Not just a piece of silverware, not just a ticket back into the Champions League, but potentially the most thumping sense of vindication recorded in recent football history.

Even if Spurs lose to Bodo/Glimt, which might well happen, this would not be a season defined solely by the league form. It would be a year where domestic disaster walked hand-in-hand with a long European campaign, and Spurs bravely fell at the penultimate hurdle. After all, plenty of other Spurs managers in the past have tried to juggle mid-week and domestic football, and not all of them reached a European semi-final.

There was a distinct 2019 energy about Tottenham on Thursday night. This may be the end of a cycle, this team may be going nowhere in the league, but they still found a different level inside themselves and a different way to win. They looked transformed by the context and the stakes, and their chance to make history.

Even the events of the last few months look different in the light of Thursday night. Postecoglou has assiduously been rotating the team to keep players fresh for these big European games. It has not always been pretty, when he has had to replace good players with ones devoid of confidence. No one ever wants to think about the miserable defeats at Fulham or Wolves ever again. But perhaps they were a price worth paying for nights like this.

Pape Sarr and Destiny Udogie at the final whistle (Maja Hitij/Getty Images)

The upside of those rotations is that Tottenham managed to come to Frankfurt at almost full strength. Micky van de Ven has started four games out of seven since returning from injury, but managing his minutes like that has been crucial. Spurs would never have won that game without his athleticism and presence at the back. Cristian Romero’s minutes were managed too — one hour against Bournemouth, one hour against Fulham — as he recovered from three months out with a difficult groin injury. But now he has started eight games on the spin and Frankfurt was the best of them.

Destiny Udogie has been rotated with Djed Spence over recent weeks but he also gave his best performance of the season on Thursday night. Earlier this season, he looked burned out and run into the ground. In Frankfurt, he buzzed with energy. And in the front line, Dominic Solanke, Brennan Johnson and Mathys Tel looked fit, sharp and above all trusted. Postecoglou had made a point of backing Tel to thrive out on the left. Thursday was his best game for the club yet.

Perhaps we should not be surprised. This group of players have been desperate all season to win a trophy. Even through the tough times it has been the one thing keeping them going. The coaching staff too know that whatever happens to them after May, they have a narrow window right now to write their way into history. And after those miserable League Cup and FA Cup defeats in early February, this was their only chance.

Tottenham has not always been a happy place since then. But they have saved their best performances for Europe. AZ away was a disaster, and a moment when many fans lost faith. But AZ at home was good, Frankfurt at home even better, and then Frankfurt away the best of the lot. There is no reason why that trend should not continue.

Postecoglou will keep rotating, and maybe face less criticism for doing so. Minutes will have to be managed against Nottingham Forest and Liverpool to produce another emphatic performance at home against Bodo/Glimt on May 1. West Ham away between the two legs may not see Tottenham at their absolute best. But who would argue now against diverting all his eggs into the Europa basket?

If Postecoglou can successfully guide Spurs past Bodo/Glimt to Bilbao, then all bets are off. It would be a triumph of management given the circumstances. It would put him on the brink of a historic achievement. He would even have his own equivalent to the 2019 story. Which is some narrative transformation given where things stood after Fulham or Chelsea or Wolves.

(Top photo: Maja Hitij/Getty Images)

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