Alderweireld Urges Spurs To Reproduce Last Season’s Ajax Heroics
Tottenham Hotspurs defender Toby Alderweireld has urged his teammates draw inspiration from last season’s Champions League semi-final heroics after losing the first leg of this campaign’s round of 16 at home to RB Leipzig.
Jose Mourinho’s side failed to recover from an early second half penalty from Timo Werner as the German Bundesliga side run away 1-0 winners on Wednesday night.
Tottenham famously navigated a number of tricky ties en route to their first ever Champions League final last season in games against Manchester City and notably, Ajax Amsterdam in the semi-final.
Trailing 1-0 after the first leg at home, Tottenham, then managed by Mauricio Pochettino, fell a further two goals behind in the second leg before a Lucas Moura hattrick sealed a date with Liverpool in the final at the Wanda Metropolitano.
Tottenham advanced on that occasion despite missing talismanic striker Harry Kane, who is out again with injury this time, and the problem has been compounded by the unavailability of the impressive Son Heung-Min.
The North London side will have to produce a similar result to have any chance of advancing into the quarter finals and Alderweireld is confident his side can do it again.
"We are still in it. Of course we wanted a better result, but we know we have the quality to win everywhere we want," the Belgium defender said.
"Something we proved last season is that we can score everywhere. Of course we will need a little bit of luck, but it is the first half. The second half is yet to come.
"I think it was a difficult game. You can see they have a lot of quality. We stayed in the game and I think the second half was much better than the first.
"We were unfortunate that we could not score a goal. It is all to play for."
