And that’s all from me. Bye!
Jacob Steinberg has filed his match report from the PreZero Arena:
A bit more time enjoying Hoffenheim’s hospitality and all of Tottenham’s problems probably would have faded away. After all Christian Ilzer’s struggling side certainly seemed intent on doing everything in their power to ease Spurs back to good health here, displaying such incompetence in defence that it would not be wise to conclude that Ange Postecoglou is out of the woods just yet.
What to make of a neurotic victory over the team sitting fourth from bottom in the Bundesliga? The positive for an injury-hit Spurs is that they were stylish at first, going 2-0 up with goals from James Maddison and Son Heung-min. They also saw off a fightback from Hoffenheim after half-time, Son sealing the points with a clinical strike, and were resilient enough to boost their chances of avoiding a two-legged playoff to reach the Europa League knockouts by surviving a nervy finale with four teenagers on the pitch at the end.
Much more here:
“It could be a remarkable season for Tottenham. They could win a couple of trophies,” says Owen Hargreaves on TNT. I’ll have what he’s having.
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And here’s Ange Postecoglou!
Credit to the boys. Outstanding first half, played really well. We looked a bit tired in the second half but we hung on. We had the schoolboys out there at the end. It was a great victory.
In the context of the game we knew if we could score early it would allow us to get a real good foothold in the game. Son was brilliant. The senior boys all stood up. They needed to, playing away in Europe with such an inexperienced team.
I’ve just told them to enjoy it. Irrespective of the situation we’re in, winning away in Europe gives us a good foothold in those top eight spots which will give us a week off, of respite from the schedule we’ve had, and we’re probably going to need it.
There was some encouragement here for Spurs, more than anything in the performance of Richarlison, who only once this season has played as many as today’s 58 minutes, worked pretty hard, and looked bright in the first half-hour before fading a bit. Davies brought height and nous to their defence. Players returning from injury makes a pleasant change.
In their final league game next week they host Elfsborg, who are currently 26th. A win sends them cantering into the knockout rounds, leaving playoffs for the riff-raff.
The latest Europa League table looks like this:
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lazio | 6 | 11 | 16 |
| 2 | Athletic Bilbao | 7 | 6 | 16 |
| 3 | Lyon | 7 | 8 | 14 |
| 4 | Tottenham Hotspur | 7 | 5 | 14 |
| 5 | Anderlecht | 7 | 3 | 14 |
| 6 | FCSB | 7 | 3 | 14 |
| 7 | Galatasaray | 7 | 4 | 13 |
| 8 | Eintracht Frankfurt | 6 | 4 | 13 |
| 9 | Bodo/Glimt | 7 | 3 | 13 |
| 10 | Man Utd | 6 | 4 | 12 |
| 11 | Plzen | 7 | 3 | 12 |
| 12 | Olympiacos | 7 | 3 | 12 |
| 13 | Rangers | 6 | 6 | 11 |
| 14 | AZ | 7 | 1 | 11 |
| 15 | Ajax | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| 16 | Real Sociedad | 6 | 4 | 10 |
| 17 | Roma | 7 | 2 | 9 |
| 18 | Ferencvaros | 6 | 1 | 9 |
| 19 | Fenerbahce | 7 | -2 | 9 |
| 20 | Besiktas | 7 | -4 | 9 |
| 21 | FC Porto | 7 | 1 | 8 |
| 22 | Union Saint Gilloise | 6 | 0 | 8 |
| 23 | PAOK | 6 | 2 | 7 |
| 24 | Twente | 7 | -2 | 7 |
| 25 | Midtjylland | 6 | -2 | 7 |
| 26 | IF Elfsborg | 6 | -3 | 7 |
| 27 | Braga | 6 | -3 | 7 |
| 28 | Hoffenheim | 7 | -4 | 6 |
| 29 | Maccabi Tel-Aviv | 7 | -8 | 6 |
| 30 | Slavia Prague | 6 | -2 | 4 |
| 31 | Malmo FF | 7 | -7 | 4 |
| 32 | Ludogorets | 6 | -5 | 3 |
| 33 | Qarabag FK | 7 | -11 | 3 |
| 34 | Rigas FS | 6 | -7 | 2 |
| 35 | Nice | 6 | -8 | 2 |
| 36 | Dynamo Kiev | 7 | -14 | 1 |
Scott Murray will type you through Manchester United v Rangers, if you’re up for more:
Nearly final scores: Two games (italicised) are still ongoing, with the one at Qarabag deep into stoppage time and Fenerhahce still just about in normal time. Here are the scores as they stand:
Alkmaar 1-0 Roma
Bodo/Glimt 3-1 Maccabi Tel Aviv
*Fenerbahce 0-0 Lyon
Hoffenheim 2-3 Tottenham
Malmo 2-3 Twente
Porto 0-1 Olympiacos
*Qarabag 2-3 Steaua Bucharest
Viktoria Plzen 2-0 Anderlecht
Final score: Hoffenheim 2-3 Tottenham
90+6 mins: It’s all over! Spurs were not at all convincing, but they are victorious!
Updated
90+5 mins: Akpoguma belts a long diagonal pass out of defence and into touch. Spurs are nearly there.
90+4 mins: Spurs break, and Kulusevski takes the ball to the corner flag but can’t keep it there long. Hoffenheim have a goal kick, with a bit under a minute to play.
90+3 mins: Chaves drives a cross into Archie Gray. He appeals for a penalty for handball, but Gray’s arm couldn’t have been any closer to his body and he isn’t getting one. There will be a corner, mind.
90+3 mins: Spurs are clinging on now. Kramaric’s cross doesn’t quite drop to a team-mate, but still Hoffenheim have the ball.
90+2 mins: The ball goes out of play for a Spurs goal kick. Whistles and jeers ring out as Austin takes his time over it.
90+1 mins: There will be five minutes of stoppage time, or thereabouts.
90 mins: Porro steals the ball from Nsoki on the edge of the Hoffenheim area, but he obviously feels some contact in doing so and goes down, and a potentially tasty opportunity is lost.
90 mins: Spurs bring Callum Olusesi on for Maddison.
GOAL! Hoffenheim 2-3 Tottenham (Mokwa, 88 mins)
Game back on! It’s a great cross from Kramaric on the right, and it dips onto the head of the substitute David Mokwa, who heads in from the far corner of the six-yard box!
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87 mins: And back to the keep-ball from Spurs.
86 mins: Lovely work from Kulusevski in midfield to take him past a couple of opponents, ruined by the terrible pass at the end of it that has no chance of finding Lankshear.
84 mins: The shape of the game has changed again since the goal and the substitutions. Spurs have just kept the ball for the last couple of minutes, not showing any great ambition but not letting Hoffenheim anywhere near it.
81 mins: A couple of changes for the home side. Bischof and Hlozek, two of their more enterprising attacking players, go off and Arthur Chaves and Florian Micheler replace them.
79 mins: And that is the end of Son’s evening. Will Lankshear comes on to replace him.
GOAL! Hoffenheim 1-3 Tottenham (Son, 77 mins)
N’Soki’s terrible pass gives Kulusevski the ball in the centre circle, and it’s swiftly worked through Moore to Son, who jinks his way into space before shooting low with his left foot beyond Baumann and in at the far post!
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76 mins: It was always likely, given the number of injuries in both camps and the teams’ form, that this would end up being a battle between limited teams, and that’s what it has become. It’s all a bit messy right now, which has helped to give Spurs a bit of a foothold again.
74 mins: A fraction of a chance for Spurs. Porro’s cross from the right somehow bounces through to Son, but he’s as surprised by this development as everyone else and can’t control it.
70 mins: Tottenham have been absolutely execrable since half-time. They have had no idea how to turn possession in their defensive third into possession in their attacking third, and so have just repeatedly biffed the ball aimlessly upfield and gifted it to their opponents.
GOAL! Hoffenheim 1-2 Tottenham (Stach, 68 mins)
It’s been coming, and now it’s come! Stach starts the break with a fine pass out to Kramaric from his own half and from there he keeps running. Kramaric passes on to Jurasek, and his low cross from the left finds Stach six yards out. His finish is not at all convincing, but the ball spins in at the back stick!
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No penalty!
66 mins: Austin had also been shown a yellow card, and that decision is also reversed. It took the best part of five minutes to reverse that decision, but we got to the right place in the end.
65 mins: Austin gets his fingers to the ball first. And he also doesn’t foul Moerstedt at all. It would be an extraordinary penalty award.
64 mins: In fact, perhaps he has! Now the referee has been called to the replay screen.
64 mins: The VAR has not overruled it!
Hoffenheim have a penalty!
62 mins: A deflected cross from the right. Moerstedt and Austin both jump for it, the forward heads it over the bar and then the two collide. The referee gives a penalty, but it’s not at all clear to me who collided with whom. It seems a very generous decision to me, and perhaps VAR will overrule it.
Updated
60 mins: Bischof tries to chip Austin from the edge of the area, the ball eventually dropping a foot wide of the far post with the keeper helpless. It would have been a beauty of a goal.
60 mins: Somehow nothing is quite dropping for Hoffenheim inside the Spurs penalty area, but the visitors are hanging on a bit grimly at present.
58 mins: Spurs have a rare foray forward. It ends with Moor spotting Son sprinting unmarked into the penalty area, and the referee spotting that the reason he’s unmarked is that N’Soki is on the ground. He gives a free-kick against the Korean.
56 mins: Spurs make a change, Mikey Moore coming on for Richarlison, who was never going to play much more than an hour as he returns from injury.
55 mins: Now they make a chance! Kaderabek crosses from the right, Kramaric has a free header at the back post, and his attempt to send a looping header back across goal and into the top corner ends up hitting the top of the bar!
54 mins: Hoffenheim really aren’t attacking with great quality, but Tottenham’s attempts to break so far this half have been absolutely pitiful so they keep coming.
51 mins: Spurs have done absolutely nothing this half. A replay of that Kramaric penalty shout is pretty embarrassing for the Croatian.
50 mins: Kramaric goes down in search of a penalty, and stays there for a while after he fails to get it, but there’s nothing doing.
48 mins: Hoffenheim have started the half on the front foot. They’re not a hugely speedy or dynamic side, but they’re getting numbers forward and causing trouble as a result.
46 mins: Peeeeep! Football is once again being played. “This is a great matchup for neutrals like me who like to mash words together,” writes Peter Oh (brace yourself for what’s coming, reader). “I don’t care who wins, Hoffenham or Tottenheim, Hoffentotten or Heimham, Tottenhoffen or Hamheim.”
The players are back out! No halftimely changes by the look of things.
Half time: Hoffenheim 0-2 Tottenham
45+2 mins: And that’s pretty much the last kick of the half! Not completely convincing from Spurs, but in the circumstances they’ll take a two-goal lead and look grateful about it.
45+1 mins: Right at the end of stoppage time Hoffenheim make their best chance of the half, a pull-back that runs to Becker, in all sorts of space 15 yards out. He can pick his spot, and the spot he picks is Dragusin’s shin!
45 mins: Great save from Baumann! Spurs win a free-kick on the left, cross it into the area and Bergvall wins the header. He doesn’t head it cleanly but even so it takes an excellent diving stop to keep it out!
44 mins: Tottenham’s best move for a while is kick-started by Kulusevski and Bregvall exchanging backheels in their own half to beat the press, and pretty much ends when Richarlison’s pass, intended for Maddison, is hit straight into a defender.
40 mins: Hlozek’s shot is deflected towards Moerstedt. Dragusin absolutely throws himself at the ball but barely touches it with his head, and Moerstedt has a quick shot while off balance that Austin saves.
38 mins: The home side are having a bit of a spell. The win a corner, which is played short and then crossed straight into the arms of Austin. He spots Kulusevski on the halfway line and boots the ball down to him, and perhaps a goal would have resulted if the Swede were quite a lot quicker.
38 mins: The ball is played in to Stach, on the edge of a penalty area strangely devoid of defenders. But his first touch is poor, and Porro wins it.
36 mins: Most of the stats (obviously excluding the one that matters) are pretty much level. Uefa currently have possession at 50-50, Hoffenheim leading 163-159 on passes completed and 8-5 on total attempts. Spurs lead by two.
33 mins: Save! It’s a good low shot from Bischof, hit low to the right of Brandon Austin, but without great power and the keeper pushes it to safety.
Updated
31 mins: I don’t know if the microphones are broken or a sound engineer hasn’t got the balance right, but the crowd noise on the TV footage is really quiet and has been all game. There are lots of people, presumably Spurs fans at this stage, singing, but it’s a very faint background noise.
28 mins: From the corner Spurs break, and work it swiftly to the edge of the home side’s penalty area, but Becker does well to slide in and stop Maddison running onto it.
27 mins: Another corner. Bischof’s shot from really far out and really wide is deflected behind, which was pretty much the most he could hope to achieve with it.
26 mins: Hoffenheim win a corner. Bentancur heads it to the edge of the area, where a follow-up shot is deflected a couple of times and ends up at the feet of Moerstedt, who falls over backwards and demands a penalty. He doesn’t get one.
24 mins: The ball definitely did hit Bentancur’s hand, by the way, just before the second goal. He deflected it into himself with a knee, though, and it certainly wasn’t at all premeditated, or even meditated.
GOAL! Hoffenheim 0-2 Tottenham (Son, 22 mins)
A second! Maddison intercepts a Hoffenheim pass on halfway, turns and sees Son running into space. N’Soki can’t intercept the through-ball and a few moments later Kaderabek can’t block the shot – but he can deflect it in a cruel, looping arc over his keeper!
Updated
21 mins: The ball is played in to Hlozek. Bentancur gets back to divert the ball away from him, and Hoffenheim think he deliberately used a hand. VAR has a quick look and can’t find anything amiss.
19 mins: Son goes down on the left flank, rolls around in agony for approximately 0.7 seconds while he sees if the referee would buy the idea that he’d been actually fouled by Kaderabek, and then hops adroitly to his feet when he doesn’t.
16 mins: Spurs, without playing particularly fluently, are one up and could easily have had at least one other. This time Son cuts infield from the left and works himself a decent shooting chance, but can’t manage a decent shot.
14 mins: Chance for a second! Son passes to Porro, the centre-back N’Soki throws himself at the ball in an attempt to cut it out and is irrelevant when he fails, but given a free shot from the edge of the area Porro drags it wide.
Updated
12 mins: Richarlison’s low shot from 15 yards or so is firmly struck but straight at Baumann, who spills it down the middle of his area and gets away with it.
10 mins: Akpoguma gets booked for a quick tug of Maddison’s shirt after being turned in midfield.
9 mins: Richarlison’s early cross runs to Son beyond the far post, but from there Hoffenheim do well to deny both him and Maddison a chance to shoot, and eventually Bergvall overhits a pass out of play.
8 mins: A slightly half-hearted attack from the home side ends with Hlozek shooting into the legs of Dragusin.
6 mins: Well that is precisely the boost Spurs needed. Hoffenheim have won one game this season after falling behind. “Why do Hoffenheim have 10 subs while Spurs have only seven?” asks John. “Is it because Spurs only have 18 fit players?” Yes. And three of them are goalkeepers.
GOAL! Hoffenheim 0-1 Tottenham (Maddison, 4 mins)
An early goal! Baumann, the Hoffenheim keeper, boots the ball downfield but straight to Davies. It’s worked right to Porro and his long pass catches the home defence still in mild disarray after their keeper’s pass, and Maddison runs on to it, controls excellently, and finds the roof of the net!
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3 mins: The first attack of any note ends with Richarlison sending in a cross with the outside of his right foot that is quite pretty but never likely to find a teammate.
1 min: Peeeep! Spurs get the game going.
Right then, all the preambles have been ambled and there’s nothing but a quick team huddle between us and kick-off.
Out come the players! I’m trying very hard to discern a spring in their step, but they’re probably just preserving their energy.
Ange Postecoglou seems fairly chipper as he speaks to TNT Sports pre-match:
It’s a big game for us. That’s what you love about Europe, they’re always big games. It’s mainly about staying calm, playing our football. We’ve done well in this competition and we need a win tonight to give us a real good chance of finishing in the top eight.”
“Tis a mite frustrating to see the spurs lineup tbh,” writes Peter Crosby. “I understand the argument to try to win this game and avoid extra games but Son looks and Kulusevski must be exhausted! Rest them! Let’s get our young guns in there and give them chances to shine. Build em up! Running these guys into the ground is proving disastrous.” I’m not sure. I think that given the injuries they’ve just got to keep playing. I think it’s whatever they’re doing in training or whatever they’ve done to offend the gods of fitness that are proving disastrous.
Hoffenheim’s stadium, the Rhein-Neckar Arena, has a capacity of 30,150, which is about 9.45 times the population of Hoffenheim. This is equivalent to Watford, for example, boasting a stadium that holds 967,000 people, or Leeds expanding Elland Road until it can fit just under 7.8 million people.
Glenn Hoddle picks out Adam Hlozek as the Hoffenheim player to watch, partly because “he’s got a left foot and a right foot”. And probably also because he’s the club’s joint top-scorer this season, has looked like a star in the making for several years and is still only 22.
I know what you’re thinking: is the Morten Krogh who is refereeing this game related to the Morten Krogh who reached the quarter-finals in the epee at the 1972 Olympics and won five national fencing championships in his native Norway? And perhaps also to the Trine Krogh who competed in the pool at the same Olympics, in the 200m and 400m medley? And, by extension, to her uncle, the Lars Krogh who won 15 Norwegian championship titles in freestyle swimming as well as 14 in water polo before becoming president of the Norwegian Swimming Association?
And the answer is, probably not. He’s not even Norwegian.
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The teams!
Team news is in, and here are the starting line-ups:
Hoffenheim: Baumann, Kaderabek, Akpoguma, N’Soki, Jurasek, Stach, Becker, Hlozek, Bischof, Kramaric, Moerstedt. Subs: Luca Philipp, Hranac, Gendrey, Micheler, Kalambayi, Chaves, Mokwa, Behrens, Erlein, Tim Philipp, Djuric.
Tottenham Hotspur: Austin, Porro, Dragusin, Davies, Gray, Bergvall, Bentancur, Maddison, Kulusevski, Richarlison, Son. Subs: Forster, Whiteman, Lankshear, Moore, Ajayi, Olusesi, Hardy, Cassanova.
Referee: Morten Krogh (Denmark).
Hello world!
At this moment, when they are wrecked by self-doubt and stink of the foul funk of failure, the footballing fates have handed Spurs the precious gift of encouraging fixtures. Sure, they played the first of those, against an Everton team that had scored one goal in their previous six league games, on Sunday and managed to make their opponents look like the 1970 Brazil side, concede three and lose, but they have a chance to make up for it (kind of) tonight, and another against Leicester this weekend. Their season can still come good (or, at least, better).
Hoffenheim, 15th in the Bundesliga, three points above 16th-placed Heidenheim and the threat of a relegation play-off, have lost six and won just one of their last 10 games in all competitions, that solitary victory coming against 17th-placed Holstein Kiel on Saturday. “I play football because I want to win, and when you don’t win for so long, it really gets you down,” said the defender Kevin Akpoguma. “In the changing room after the game, you could feel that a weight had been lifted. After a win, everything is just nicer. A win always energises you, that’s been noticeable in the past few days too. But we can’t ease off now, we need to keep it up. It’s important that we all develop a hunger for it, so that we have this feeling much more often.”
Of their own last 10 games Spurs have won three and lost a mere five. On form, this is no contest. And yet. One problem is that Spurs have only 13 first-team players to choose from, with Pape Sarr added to the injury list after the Everton game. This makes Ange Postecoglou’s job easier, because the team more or less picks itself, and also harder, because it is more likely to be rubbish and there is less he can do about it if it is.
“The reality is we don’t have a lot of choice,” the Australian growled. “We’ve no other options, that’s the basic premise of it. We’ve probably got 13 first-team players who’ve travelled. We don’t have many options, apart from throwing untried youngsters in there but I don’t want to do that to them. You really need a strong squad of players and keep them healthy to cope with playing in Europe if you do well in the cup competitions like we have, because it’s not manageable when you’ve got three games a week for the length of time we have.”
So here we are. Two desperate teams. One game. Tottenham, in ninth place and outside the automatic progress spots only on goal difference, will move into the top eight if they win and get to feel decent for a bit. Hoffenheim, in 27th, surely need to win at least one and lose neither of their last two Europa League fixtures if they are to have any hope even of a playoff place. It is, in its slightly miserable way, a massive, potentially season-shaping game. Welcome!
