No shame in losing to Messi, but things don’t look good for Tottenham
By Hallam Lewis
In their crucial Champions League clash against Barcelona, Tottenham, like so many before them, were powerless to prevent the genius of Lionel Messi.
This Tottenham side had never faced Lionel Messi before Wednesday night. Not that it would have made a difference. It took the Argentine under two minutes to be decisive, retiring to a deeper pocket of Wembley’s unaesthetic straw, where he collected the ball, detected the scurrying Alba and weighted an inch-perfect, lofted ball into the Spaniard’s path.
Philippe Coutinho’s finish was superb, but the real artistry had been conducted before the scores changed. Cynics might contest that preventative measures were left wanting — was there too much space granted to the one man who so blatantly should be denied it?
Perhaps Spurs weren’t diligent enough, but to avert focus from Messi would be a gross injustice. His genius was so overwhelming that Ivan Rakitic’s jaw-dropping volley is reduced to a mere side note, Luis Suarez’s brilliant dummies barely print worthy, Arthur’s tidy display a minor affair.
It usually takes something objectively special to incite the applause of both the home and away fans. It isn’t normal for supporters to feel a degree of admiration, perhaps even fortune at witnessing a loss on their own turf. But that’s the effect that Messi has.
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And it could have been far worse. Beyond dictating, dominating and manipulating proceedings, Messi might have had four goals — numbers so obscene yet so familiar that they fail to evoke any sense of novelty.
Somewhat unfairly, it was just the two. The first, a beautifully cushioned effort to round off a move conceived, constructed and ended by Messi was all the more mesmerizing in light of the preceding moments.
He had twice driven through the heart of Wembley’s auburn turf, pursued by hapless white blurs, before witnessing his low, curling efforts agonizingly collide with the left upright. His audacity, then, to aim for the same corner, and locate it so unerringly moments later, was superlative.
Aside from the calibre of opposition, Tottenham might be granted some form of pardon for their dismantling. The game felt predictable before it had even begun. Tottenham’s starting XI was, in harsh terms, more fitting for the League Cup’s earlier rounds than Barcelona in the Champions League.
Did Victor Wanyama and Harry Winks possess any genuine chance of controlling the central areas that Sergio Busquets seldom fails to monopolize? Were the necessary elements of creativity, technique and guile to be present without Christian Eriksen and Dele Alli? Was a defense short of Jan Vertonghen really expected to stand firm? Unlikely.
Yet the feeling of underachievement, now veering towards stagnation, is becoming increasingly palpable within Mauricio Pochettino’s side. There is little disgrace in being Messi’s latest victim, but four losses already this season places them on a platform with Manchester United — a club deemed by many to be on the brink of footballing apocalypse.
Should we not, by our own standards, be turning up the heat on Tottenham too? Given they sit comfortably in fourth, have incurred three of four losses to “big teams,” and strong rapport still exists between manager and players, perhaps not.
But the pattern — that of encouragement but ultimately underachievement — is ever present. The danger is that their trajectory is beginning to look more horizontal than vertical. One wonders, now we find ourselves in the fourth year of Pochettino’s project, if the next step is genuinely achievable.
They may well find themselves back in the competition next year, but would that represent any meaningful improvement if nights like this continue to overwhelm them? Has anything been learnt from the shortcomings of recent seasons?
On this year’s evidence, no. The lack of transfer business, particularly in the midfield, was exposed. For all the huffing and puffing, you never felt like they had the quality, or ruthless mentality, necessary to prize a result from this tie.
Yet it was hard to imagine any side resisting Messi’s hypnotic talent last night. Spurs, almost shamelessly, played second fiddle to a staggering and unstoppable force. A force that, quite truthfully, demands unparalleled status.