3-0! (in the second half)

Tottenham go down fighting after shipping four goals in Milan

Published: 21 October, 2010
by DAN CARRIER at the San Siro

Champions League
Inter Milan 4, Spurs 3 

LAST night (Wednesday) the fleet-footed Welsh winger Gareth Bale scored a hat-trick for Spurs at the San Siro.

I wish I could end my match report there. He hit three superb solo identi­kit goals in a game which highlighted everything that makes being a Tottenham fan an act of unrequited love and of emotional turmoil.

For a minute at the end of the 90, after his final match ball grabbing effort went in, we dared hope that we could pull off the most remarkable of recoveries in a game we simply did not turn up to.

Sadly, an equaliser would have ignored the fact Inter had given us a thrashing until Bale decided after four first-half goals with no answer he’d show his team mates how it’s done. 

This was a fixture we had been looking forward to since the Champions League draw was made – a tie at the San Siro against European champions Inter Milan, the stuff footballing fantasies are made of.

You could spot these dreamers at Stansted airport yesterday afternoon (Wednesday). 

Small groups were gathered nervously at the bars drinking pints before noon. They were going on what has been a remarkable journey for everyone connected to Spurs, and they all had pinch-me-I-don’t-believe- I-am-here expressions on their faces.

This time two years ago we were bottom, with no wins, and Arsenal-supporting colleagues at work were inviting me via Facebook to the “Spurs Relegation Party, May 2009” they’d organised.

Now I was in my colours going to see essentially the same squad of players appear at one of the world’s ­greatest football arenas. 

All the estimated 12,000 Spurs fans wanted was a game, and turned the Milan Metro into a Latin version of the Victoria Line on the way to this titanic stadium, much to the bemusement of Italian commuters caught up in a raucous sing song. Disappointingly for those who had spent some serious money to watch this “contest”, it was over before it begun.

It took Javier Zanetti just two minutes to give the home side the lead when he burst through the Tottenham right channel and buried a low shot past Gomes. Flares wafted across the pitch and it was as if the smoke  had got in the eyes of the boys in white, because a bad beginning got promptly worse when Jonathan Biabiany broke clear moments later. Gomes rushed out, clattered into him and got his marching orders. Sammy Eto’o converted the penalty. 

To play 11 on 11 would be hard enough, but now Spurs were a man down and the dream was a nightmare with just over 10 minutes gone.

A third came before replacement keeper Cudicini had touched the ball, with Dejan Stankovic walloping home from the edge of the box, and it was done and dusted before Eto’o made it four on 35, and so even the chant “We’re going to win 4-3”, belted out with a gusto that belied heavy hearts as the game restar­ted was soon redundant.

Perhaps Bale’s second-half show will stir Harry Redknapp’s charges into giving Inter a match  at the Lane in a couple of weeks. 

In the meantime, as we start a long trek home tonight, we can console ourselves that to get this far has been a remarkable achievement, unthinkable when Harry took charge. And in Gareth Bale, we have a player worth the cost of a bucket flight on a Wednesday night.