Frankfurt 0-1 Totttenham (1-2 on aggregate) (Solanke pen 43’)
DEUTSCHE BANK PARK – Can it be that the impossible dream lives on? In this sizzling sanctuary of fire and brimstone away from the desperate misery of the Premier League, Tottenham Hotspur roared into the Europa League semi-finals – and saved Ange Postecoglou’s job.
This was to be his defining night; his side have been bloodied, bruised, beaten and all but down and out. How peculiar to think they are just three games from pulling off one of the greatest and unlikeliest achievements in their history.
So it is Dominic Solanke who steps up, stuttering, perhaps replaying in his mind the two disastrous penalties from Bukayo Saka and Eberechi Eze on Wednesday. The thud of the drums ahead of him is bellowing.
With the spot-kick converted, he takes one more look at the viper’s nest – with his teammates, he congregates for a pointed celebration at the Frankfurt supporters who have been hurling bottles and paper missiles at them all evening.
It should not have taken the VAR to notice that James Maddison had been cleaned out by the on-rushing goalkeeper Kaua Santos. No matter – when the spot-kick came this was a fist banged on the desk, Spurs at their pluckiest, a rare moment of bipartisan unity for Ange Outers and Inners alike.
All season they have felt like frogs in simmering water, waiting for the moment that tensions bubbled over. Instead it was Frankfurt who failed to keep their heads, their assistant manager seeing red after taking exception to a Brennan Johnson foul near the sidelines.
Poison swirled around this cauldron of a stadium and for all their attributes, Postecoglou’s Tottenham have not been known for their resilience. Still, the battering ram came, Guglielmo Vicario forced into a brilliant low one-handed save and Micky van de Ven retreating gallantly over his defence’s scorched earth.
The setting was incongruous, a ground surrounded by allotments and beech trees, a couple of black and red eagle flags swaying quietly in the wind outside – an inoffensive enough scene for a game that threatened to silence Angeball once and for all.
This time there was no cupped ear to the fans, none of the prickly bravado of recent weeks on an occasion when the stakes were too agonisingly high. In the city’s bars, he even received a rendition of Loving Big Ange Instead. Sometimes the old ones are the best.
One theory is that Postecoglou was only here to see the quarter-finals at all because the list of alternative candidates who are interested grows thinner every summer. Another is that Daniel Levy’s new-found persistence stems from a weariness of wielding the axe.
What is incontestable is that thousands of supporters descended on Germany knowing that giant silver pot of a Europa League trophy is not everything, but for one night it felt like it was.
They listened patiently before kick-off as 50,000 had belted out the metal anthem Wir ham’ noch lange nicht genug. We’re not done yet. Neither are Tottenham in Europe. And somehow, some way, neither is Postecoglou.
