Tottenham got off to an excellent start in their Champions League campaign after registering a 3-1 win against German giants Borussia Dortmund at the Wembley Stadium. The game had a blistering start with 3 goals in the first 15 minutes of the game. Tottenham’s Heung Min Son opened the scoring in the 4th minute with a solo effort, following which Andriy Yormolenko equalized in the 11th minute. Tottenham took the lead again in the 15th minute through Harry Kane. Tottenham held on to lead and absorbed the pressure really well till the half time whistle. Tottenham extended their lead to 3-1 in the 60th minute again through Harry Kane.
With this victory, Tottenham packed up all three points.Below are three talking points from the exhilarating contest at the Wembley:
Tottenham came up with a plan and executed it to perfection:
Tottenham came with a well-worked plan which was to hurt Dortmund’s high defensive line by attacking on the counter without doing away with the defensive solidarity at the back. Tottenham scored two quick goals on either side of Yarmolenko’s strike and both of them were on the counter. After that Tottenham did really well to sit back and absorb the pressure.
Tottenham continued to exploit Dortmund’s high defensive line and progressed further up the pitch in the second half. They continued to create chances and if it had not been for Tottenham’s reckless finishing, the game would have been done and dusted way before it actually did.
Dortmund’s high defensive line:
Dortmund’s high defensive line warrants a separate talking point as this was one of the most important factors in Tottenham being able to exploit the Germans on the counter. Although this gave Dortmund an obvious advantage in allowing them to maintain pressure in the midfield, they were always vulnerable on the counter and were often a dispossession and a through-ball away from being left with only the keeper to beat.
This allowed Kane and Son the luxury of running over the defenders’ shoulders and latch on to through balls by Eriksen. Dortmund’s own tactic came back to bite them eventually.
Some really bad refereeing decisions:
Dortmund were at the receiving end of some really bad refereeing decisions. Apart from a disallowed offside goal from Aubameyang which was quite clearly onside, the referee got a few other offside calls wrong, one which included Sissoko who went on through one on one with the keeper despite being offside as the call never came.
Jan Vertonghen’s red card was also quite controversial at the death of the game. All in all it was disastrous refereeing overall.
