CL knockouts

[Hot Orange]

Wonderful from Spurs - to actually top what happened the night before was hugely impressive.

However a Spurs-Livepool final isn't a great thing for the people of Madrid.

As we should all be striving to reduce the amount of flying we do, surely the final should be switched to Villa Park or something.

[Simon G]

I'm trying to find an unedited replay of the winning goal, because the commentry was eerily silent. I think Darren Fletcher didn't want to commit to calling the goal until the shot above and Jermaine Jena's was genuinely speechless. After this, I'm sure there was a weird shot of a workman in a high-vis jacket.

BT Sport's have polished the whole thing up in their YouTube summary.

https://twitter.com/btsport/status/1126231785191419909

This is on their twitter page - I just love Darren Fletcher's reaction when the goal goes in.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Ah that fills in the blanks and mindwarps!

[Sporting]

a Spurs-Livepool final isn't a great thing for the people of Madrid.

For the bars it most surely is.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Liverpool have announced pricing details for their fans with the cheapest tickets costing £60, but only accounting for 20% of the Reds' allocation.

In addition 54% of tickets are priced at £154, 21% at £385 and 5% at £513.

I mean, that's absolutely outrageous!

[Simon G]

I saw last night that the allocations are just over 16,000 fans each as well, in a 67,000 seat stadium!!

[seand]

I've not really seen what the fuss was about with Rory Smith's stuff before but this is very good :

Real Madrid was not the greatest opponent this Ajax team overcame. Nor was Juventus. Its biggest challenge, by far, was the fact that this competition is no longer for teams like this. Ajax and its ilk are, at best, tolerated by the superclubs who see the Champions League as their birthright: their continued presence ranks somewhere between a nuisance and a hangover from history. That is why Ajax, last season’s Dutch runner-up, had to start its campaign in July, and Tottenham and Liverpool — third and fourth in the Premier League last year — could wait until September.

Worth repeating ad nauseum. As it stands Ata-fucking-lanta will be one of SIXTEEN English/Italian/Spanish/German clubs straight into the groups.

[Sporting]

I saw last night that the allocations are just over 16,000 fans each as well, in a 67,000 seat stadium!!

Welcome to the UEFA family.

[anton pulisov]

Yep, I can go back to hating UEFA and their shitty Champions League now. I'll be honest, it's unlikely I'll watch the final.

[ad hoc]

Just to add to the pain of last night, we should never forget that Lucas Moura is a fan of that fascist homophobic racist cunt Bolsonaro.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Welcome to the UEFA family.

When Chelsea got knocked out of the CL in "controversial" circumstances in 2009 the pain was eased, quite substantially in fact, by the realisation that I wouldn't have to take part in the scramble for tickets for the final and to justify, to my wife and myself, their cost and all of the associated travel and accommodation expenses.

[Capybara]

When Chelsea got knocked out of the CL in "controversial" circumstances in 2009 the pain was eased, quite substantially in fact, by the realisation that I wouldn't have to take part in the scramble for tickets for the final and to justify, to my wife and myself, their cost and all of the associated travel and accommodation expenses.

Yeah, been through all that. In our case it was 9000 tickets and, not known to us at the time, that included those going to players, officials and hangers-on. I'd given up hope until a 'phone call from the club late on the Saturday afternoon before the final saying that the ticket was going to be sent registered delivery on the Monday, meaning I'd need to take the Tuesday morning off work (the day before the final) to receive it. And that meant a full-price Eurostar ticket had to be procured on the Sunday morning.

Just posting this to show that my lot have been in a European final, really.

And congratulations to Spurs.

[anton pulisov]

When Chelsea got knocked out of the CL in "controversial" circumstances in 2009 the pain was eased, quite substantially in fact, by the realisation that I wouldn't have to take part in the scramble for tickets for the final and to justify, to my wife and myself, their cost and all of the associated travel and accommodation expenses.

Yep, I was living 40 minutes outside Stockholm when Ajax were in the Europa League final there in 2017. Couldn't go. Well, I could, but wasn't going to stump up 500 euros.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

As we should all be striving to reduce the amount of flying we do, surely the final should be switched to Villa Park or something.

We've now had all-Italian finals in Manchester, all- German finals in London, all-Spanish ones in Lisbon and Milan and all-English ones in Moscow and now Madrid. You would think there was some kind of contingency plan for this kind of occurrence.

[Jah Womble]

Okay, I've just about recovered from last night. Fantastic scenes.

Football is art. And art isn't about winning trophies.

I've been trading off that maxim for some years. However, you've just won a trophy last weekend (with a possible second to come) - I'd not be writing off the silverware just yet.

Or he'll just dive for a peno like usual.

Or Salah will, who knows?

I think I got over my divorce more quickly.

[Logan Mountstuart]

Haven't caught up on the thread yet, but Holland is like a morgue as I drive round today. Meeting lots of 16 year old Ajax fans as I deliver to Macdonalds. Many of them are close to tears. A lot of them are simply not that used to seeing their team fail. But that was particularly cruel last night.

My daughter spent the match in a crowded pub. She said she finally now understood how football can make or break grown mens' hearts.

[Jah Womble]

I keep hearing this word 'cruel', much as I did after the Man City tie.

I like Ajax a lot and have some sympathy of course, but - as I said after the previous round - if you concede three goals in a home leg, well, you get what you deserve, basically. We all know how it works.

[Tactical Genius]

After the first leg at the Lane, I fully expected Spurs to get through. Ajax remind me of a mid to late Wenger Arsenal team (and this season too). Quick slick passing from a very technical midfield and good movement upfront will kill you when you sit off them and allow them the ball.
The moment you put an extra man in midfield, up the tempo and put in a few tackles, they quickly fall apart and their flair players disappear. The also showed an Arsenal-esque weakness in the air and a disconnect between the keeper and the back four as balls between them seems to cause unnecessary panic.

Another reason I had belief (even at 3-0 down) was the full knowledge Ajax lack game management and have no ability to kill the game when ahead, two prime examples were the Onana booking and a poor attempt to keep the ball in the corner flag in injury time. Fair play to Ajax as it makes them a more entertaining team, but its these fine margins that's the difference between winning and losing.

Another thing that stood out in both the CL and Europa league are the inability of many teams to play a high tempo game for a sustained period of time.

This is why all four English teams progressed so far in the Champions league blowing teams away with their pure physicality and pace even when they looked comparatively lethargic in league games (Spurs and Man U).

Liverpool and Spurs just kept the game at a high tempo for 30 minutes and at the end of it, their opponents were breathing out of their backside. Ziech was on his haunches after 30 minutes and I believe that had an effect on his decision making when presented with chances in the second half.

Something concerning to the big European clubs is their midfielders are comparatively old and slow compared to their British opponents and are just getting run off the park and then dismantled in the second half.
Ajax were able to play a high tempo game too, but like Dortmund, just could not maintain the energy levels long enough.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Oh dear. I've just seen the video of the Ajax fans in a bar joyfully counting down to the final whistle!

[anton pulisov]

The main difference between this Ajax and the 1995 one is Frank Rijkaard. He'd have cleaned up those long balls all night and kept things calm and organised at the back. And Davids would have been taking names in midfield.

Spurs had the experience of Vertonghen and Alderweireld at the back, so that helped. The Ajax defence was more naïve. Ajax sent both De Ligt and Blind up for free kick at 3-0 up on aggregate with 35 minutes left in the tie. Spurs scored their first goal from the resulting counter. Insanity.

But at the same time. This is the group of players Ajax have. They got this far by playing this way because it's how they can stand out from the crowd. If they had tried to play rough and tumble football from the beginning of the Champions League then they would have been eliminated in the group stage by other teams doing the same thing, but with more physical players. That's why I would have dropped Schöne. He's good at what he does, but Sissoko is better at it by quite some distance. So don't try and play Spurs at their own Premier League game. But at 3-0 up the final was in sight, and the players got drawn in to the battle and tried to hold on until the end. And that's playing with fire.

And then there's also the depth of the squads. Spurs have top internationals on the bench. Neres is key for Ajax yet when he is injured, we have to play Dolberg, who is absolutely useless.

[Tactical Genius]

Oh dear. I've just seen the video of the Ajax fans in a bar joyfully counting down to the final whistle!

I was in such a bar opposite the stadium yesterday (touts were asking for 500 Euro and I wasn't paying that). The Ajax fans were singing and taunting us. They emptied out pretty quickly when we scored though.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Dolberg strikes me as the sort of player that arsene wenger used to pay £18 million for and at the end of the season he would be sent out on loan to FC copenhagen, because that would seem to be his kind of level.

Ajax sent both De Ligt and Blind up for free kick at 3-0 up on aggregate with 35 minutes left in the tie. Spurs scored their first goal from the resulting counter. Insanity.

But isn't this what they always do? isn't there a contingency plan for this, as in there are a couple fo players who know that it's their job to stand in certain positions to guard against the counter attack? (though I would have thought that Blind would have been one of those players. That you could live with. Omana spooning the ball off the toe of one of his own players, to moura for the second goal is the moment I would be more puzzled by. Also It's worth considering that Ajax did hit the post twice playing the way they did. a couple of inches either way and we'd be talking about the masterful ajax tactical masterclass, overcoming the long ball big man little man 70's kick and rush by tottenham. It's not far removed from Pep being slaughtered for being a bald fraud, rather than a genius because sergio aguero was three inches too far forward in the last seconds of a match they actually won.

As it stands, tactics, technique and organization have been slaughtered in the public square by the traditional british brexit values of the hard physical labour of the young, an approach that tickled all the nostalgia buttons (even if that wasn't the way that spurs themselves used to play) success, heroes, and then you had the Hero leader putting on a massive emotional display because his heart is so bursting with passion and desire, that he had some sort of episode.

Basically how liverpool beat barcelona. It's passion, Pride, hard work, traditional manly characteristics but also the special unique nature of the club as the only team that could possibly come from three goals down in a champions league tie. There's very little focus on all the work that Klopp has put into tactical preparation and coaching of the players over a long period of time, or the ability of the players to adhere to the tactical plan and to execute it right through the ninety minutes. You'd swear he was William Wallace the way that this is generally being presented. there's no sense in reading any of the coverage, that Liverpool are so much better organized team than Barcelona, and so much fitter, that they were able to murder them without salah and mane. The Bronze age hero myth approach to football should have taken a pause when it was divock Origi that did the damage, and not Mo Salah. (There's also an element of this in the way that spurs' victory is represented. Spurs are a very well organized team on a basic level which enabled them to perform at the level they did)

[E10 Rifle]

Yeah echoing TG (and Anton, a bit), Ajax have been wonderful throughout this competition but their game management yesterday was strikingly poor. They didn't seem to know what level to play at in the second half, and the defending for the second goal in particular was shocking. Spurs were the better team comfortably in the second half.

[Flynnie]

At the same time, Tottenham scored at 95:01 of a game with five minutes of added time, mainly because Lisandro Magallan slipped which allowed Dele Alli the space to pass to Moura.

It's all great and good tut-tutting at the naivete of Ajax, but let's not ignore that Spurs got incredibly lucky.

[anton pulisov]

Yep, the slip in injury time. Chivu also slipped in injury time in 2003. Milan scored, and went on to win the cup.

Also worth noting that Spurs are through twice in a row on away goals.