The most memorable Tottenham games of the decade (Part 1 of 2)

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Supporting a football club is amazing because it is simultaneously deeply personal and fully collective – we all experienced the same games, yet we experienced them in infinite different ways. I guess I am a year late on this given that this was a cool thing to have done in 2020 but yknow what, this time last year I was quite busy and this time this year I am quite unbusy, so here we go:

The Top 10 most memorable Tottenham games of the 2010’s, one per season.

Note that this isn’t about our most objectively important games or the games we have played best in. This is about the games that stand out to me, for good or for bad, for ecstasy or for agony, for so many other different reasons, as defining games in my journey as a Spurs fan. All of them are games I can visualise with precision – where I was, who I was with, and exactly what happened in the game. Some will resonate with you, some might feel entirely irrelevant and some you might not even remember at all.

However you experienced the past decade of Tottenham Hotspur, I hope this sparks nostalgia for you. Enjoy the trip down memory (WH) Lane!

 

  1. Tottenham 2-1 Chelsea, April 18th 2010

The plaudits this season tend to go either to the game prior to this one – the 2-1 vs Arsenal with that Danny Rose goal – or the defining Champions League qualification game a month later featuring Peter Crouch’s 89th minute bundle-in. However, the game in the run-in that I remember the most fondly was this one, in the middle of all that, a highly unexpected yet defining 2-1 win against eventual league winners Chelsea on a Saturday afternoon, which saw us continue the momentum from the Arsenal game and grab the three points that finally took us up to 4th and which I believe really propelled us to the CL spot. The second goal from Bale was defining of what was to come: a cheeky one-two down the left wing with Bale driving into the box, cutting inside and in fact scoring with his right foot.

I was living in Sweden at the time and would watch every Spurs game at a local “sport pub” with one devoted Swedish Spurs fan from the local area, Ville. I remember his elation at this game and our march onto a night out, which the next day I mentioned to a different friend as “one of the best nights out of the year”. He responded quite simply: “the night out was fine, man. It was normal. But how often do you have a night out after beating Chelsea? Never. So for you, it was the best.” When the day’s football score actually elevates your night out, you know it was a special result.

 

  1. AC Milan 0-1 Tottenham, February 15th 2011

Of all the Milan games during our inaugural Champions League run, and there were more than anyone could ever have imagined, this one really captured my heart because we showed something I hadn’t really seen us show before in a big game: resilience. My whole upbringing we had been characterised by a soft underbelly; I was 13 for the 3-5 to Man Utd, a very impressionable age as you know. Yet here we were, the first leg of a Champions League knockout tie against Ibrahimovic’s Milan and with a lineup comprising players such as Steven Pienaar, Heurelho Gomes and a 75 year old William Gallas. Yet we defended, defended for our lives, somehow kept it tight, even without emerging talisman Bale and classic goal machine Defoe. The whole game was a nailbiter, a tense yet unexpectedly chaotic affair full of fouls and aggression, typified by their resident psycho Gennaro Gattuso. This was ultimately a game that we had no right to even lose narrowly – this should have been a 5-0 crushing by Milan – but we got to the 80th minute at 0-0. And then…a commentator’s dream: an emphatic counter attack. “He can’t work it through to Pato, Sandro was in the way…and, ooh, here’s Lennon who has space to move into…two up and two back, Lennon to take on Yepes here…OHHH and he’s away Aaron Lennon…CROUUUUCHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YESSSSS!!!!! TOTTENHAM LEAD IN MILAN AND PETER CROUCH HAS GOT A PRICELESS AWAY GOAL!!!!”

The moment Lennon skips away from that Yepes challenge is my favourite – the goal has to happen once he squares it, yet Crouch still nearly misses. But, he didn’t – and the Spurs went marching on (for one more round at least).

 

  1. Man City 3-2 Tottenham, January 22nd 2012

I still dream of this game, I still have nightmares of this game. In the dream, there is only one change to reality; the nightmare is simply what ended up happening. If the dream had come true, I think the entire future of Tottenham Hotspur would be different, more so than due to any other game.

I watched this in my local Spurs pub in Hornsey with my dad, a pretty common and uneventful occurrence at this time. What wasn’t usual was our form. We had embarked on a majestic run, the one that saw players like Aaron Lennon tweeting “WWWWWWDWWWWW #keeptherungoing” and our swashbuckling football taking us to within a game of both Man City and Man Utd at the pinnacle. We had this game in hand, you see, one from the first weekend of the season, vs Everton, that had been postponed due to the London riots (!). After an atrocious start to the season being crushed 3-0 away to Utd and getting destroyed 5-1 at home by City, we became unstoppable and we finally got to the fabled game-in-hand in mid January – and we won 2-0. We had caught up, next was City and the chance to go joint top of the league, avenge the crushing loss from August and lay down a marker for the rest of the season

The first half was a stalemate of sorts as both teams felt each other out, but in the second half City came out swinging. Quick goals from Nasri and Lescott (seriously) saw us 2-0 down and the dream of competing with the Billionaire playtoys seemed dead. Yet City got complacent; some overpriced defender (who knows who it was, who cares) gave the ball away to Defoe in their own half and the boy Jermaine ran through to slot home.

Then came the moment of majesty.

We pushed forward and the classic combo of the era, Lennon to Bale, saw GB3 sweep in a stunning long range finish to put us into raptures. I recall a commentator later quoting “I have never seen a neutral media area celebrate like that – they knew something special had happened”. We knew it too, and the win was on. The drama to come was unprecedented. With a few minutes to go, Mario Balotelli stamped on Scott Parker’s head while he lay on the ground – missed by the referee, a definite red in today’s VAR world but in this case, nothing. Yet it would have been irrelevant, as Micah Richards mis-controlled the ball on the halfway line in the 89th minute, and Gareth Bale swooped in. He ran the length of the touchline, a breakaway, the moment we had been waiting for, and swept the ball across goal for the onrushing Defoe to slot into an empty net…

And he could only put it wide.

I relive that moment sometimes. I imagine Defoe might do too. Or maybe he doesn’t; I assume professional footballers are trained to forget these sorts of things.

Did Bale hit the cross too hard? Too far forward? Did Defoe check his run? We’ll never know. If Defoe converts, that’s 3-2 and the game and a Spurs title charge. As it was, he missed. City took the goal kick, launched it into the box and Captain one-leg himself, Ledley King, gave away a penalty against who else but Mario Balotelli – who should have been sent off earlier. Mario steps up and converts, and that was that.

Much was said about Spurs’ collapse that season which saw us miss out on the Champions League and visibly started a few games after this one, yet I believe it was this game that was the end of our Redknapp era and the start of the rut. It would take us a few seasons to recover. My nightmares will go on for a while yet.

I’m not posting a video of this. It’s too painful.

 

  1. Lyon 1-1 Tottenham, Feb 21st 2013 (Spurs win 3-2 on aggregate)

You always remember your first, they say. This was my first ever Spurs European away game, and what an experience it was. I was lucky to have some close friends in Lyon, so I went out a few days early to be a tourist. While we hung out, one guy mentioned how lucky we were to have scored in the last minute of the first leg to win 2-1 and that we were a “one man team” with Bale, and that he was sure Lyon would win in an intimidating home atmosphere. Intimidating was correct – the night before the match, the bar allocated to Spurs fans was attacked by Lyon “Ultras” and the entire matchday took on a tense, unnerving atmosphere across the city. On arrival to the stadium we were greeted with hordes of armoured police and escorted to the gate. On entering the stadium I found my seat and quickly found out that in European away games, a seat number is more of a guide than a rule – everyone was standing everywhere, so I immersed myself in the atmosphere and got chatting to a few fellow fans nearby. My friend txted that he’d see me after the game in a nearby restaurant, and wished Spurs bad luck with a winky emoji.

The game was an entertaining battle fought in a cauldron of relentless noise from the Lyon fans, and soon they scored. Spurs tried hard but to no avail, and supporters around me started getting antsy and downhearted. I hadn’t come all this way to do that, however, plus I’d had a few glasses of high class French vino during the afternoon. I still remember drunkenly screaming “YOU CAN STILL DO THIS LADS” repeatedly into the void of the giant stadium with absolutely no chance of anyone hearing me. The game entered stoppage time and Lyon fans around the stadium were celebrating already, yet we came forward one last time and my favourite player of the decade, Moussa Dembele, in his debut season for Spurs, skipped past a challenge and out of absolutely nowhere rifled a screamer low and hard into the bottom corner. 1-1. We were through. We. Went. Wild.

The Spurs fans’ area turned into a raving mosh pit, with people flying everywhere. I genuinely recall a man crowd-surfing head first down our melee of crazed celebrating fans screaming “HAVE A PIECE OF THAT YOU BLOODY FRENCH FROGS!!!”. I was wearing glasses – they disappeared and were never seen again. This was pure elation, chaos, in the stands in a foreign land – and something I will remember forever.
After the game, we were locked in for over an hour yet chanting, singing and dancing all the while. We were finally escorted out by a huge armed police squadron and after a few attempts to explain that I needed to meet a local friend nearby, one of them let me escape the cordon. I entered a very, very disgruntled Lyon-fans restaurant and quickly zipped up my coat to conceal my Spurs shirt – I guess my celebrations, in public at least, were over for the evening.

(I love the totally unnecessary sepia tone on this video making it look like a relic from the 1960s rather than eight years ago)

  1. Sheffield Utd 2-2 Spurs, Jan 28th 2015 (Spurs win 3-2 on aggregate)

Continuing the theme of us winning 3-2 on aggregate, the next game I really remember defining my experience as a Spurs fan was the away game to Sheffield Utd in the League Cup semi final. What you’ll therefore realise is that I have fully missed out the 13-14 season, aka the season of the Gilet, aka the Sherwood season. I spent most of that season abroad and not able to watch as much, plus for the team it felt like an interim year, one where we suffered post-Bale and hadn’t reached the Poch-era yet. So, skip to Jan 2015 and a semi final second leg against lower league Sheffield Utd.

My younger sister was still a student at Nottingham Uni and due to a Spurs fan ex-boyfriend of hers, had accidentally become a Spurs fanatic at the ripe old age of 20 having resisted any semblance of football passion for the previous two decades despite the encouragement of my dad and I. Anyhow, I embraced it, and we randomly managed to pick up a couple of last minute tickets to this game (considered somewhat of a procession after our 1-0 home win in the first leg) with me driving to Notts, picking her up and going onwards to Sheffield to explore a bit, have some pub time and enjoy the local hospitality. What we didn’t anticipate was the absolutely insane snowstorm that ensued as we left Nottingham. The journey turned into a real ordeal, meaning we arrived with just a few seconds to kickoff and missed out on the classic Sheffield Pre-Match Experience™ that we had come all the way for. We were pleased to note that we had literally front row seats behind the goal, however.

The game was a bore for 75 minutes, Christian Eriksen netting early on to make things fairly pedestrian with us sitting there in -5 degrees and a blizzard. Cue Che Adams, x2, and within three minutes we were losing 2-1 (2-2 on aggregate with no away goals rule). I still can’t really remember how it happened as it was at the other end and it was snowing, but our casual trip back to Nottingham was going to have to wait because we were heading for extra time. In the 88th minute (you know what’s coming…) out of nowhere our man from Denmark Eriksen, no doubt in his comfort zone due to the snow, got played through and as he let the ball run across him, barely 10 metres away from us, I remember holding my breath and grabbing my sister’s arm, a truly “time stood still” moment. Eriksen slotted it home, the net bulged within touching distance and it was party time as the players all sprinted over and celebrated emphatically with us (I’m sure they remember me hurling my scarf around in circles like an unhinged fabric helicopter, accidentally whipping them in the face). Not only were Spurs through, but we could leave Sheffield! The best part was that our proximity to goal meant we were captured on TV – a first for me – going absolutely nuts, with our proud/concerned parents having recorded the game just in case this happened. We left the stadium buzzing, the literal numbness in our limbs superseded by the warmth in our hearts and even driving back down the M1 to Nottingham at 20mph in a snow storm didn’t feel too bad, despite the imminent prospect of death on the road. Spurs win, life wins, and I’m never going back to Sheffield again.

Harry Kane celebrating with the crowd at 3:35 is priceless.

Read Part Two (2016-2020) here!

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