Champions League takeaways: Kane injury dampens Spurs win

Tottenham earned an impressive win against Manchester City, but an injury to Harry Kane will hurt. Here are three takeaways from Tuesday’s CL games.

Tottenham were the big winners of the first slate of Champions League quarterfinal games on Tuesday, but their hopes of going through may hinge on the fitness of Harry Kane. Elsewhere, Naby Keita was on the scoresheet again as Liverpool beat Porto. Here are three takeaways from the action.

Kane injury takes the spotlight

Spurs were excellent against Manchester City in their first European match at their new home stadium. Their medium block effectively stifled City’s attack — but for one, dubious penalty call against Danny Rose — and they played with an intensity that seemed to rattle their visitors.

The good news is they showed they can compete with Pep Guardiola’s side. The bad news is they’ll likely have to make it through the second leg without their prime goalscoring threat after Kane was forced off with injury midway through the second half.

It’s worth acknowledging that Heung-min Son, who has arguably been Tottenham’s best player this season, scored the winner after Kane left the pitch, but it’s also worth acknowledging Kane was replaced by Lucas Moura. Not exactly an upgrade.

Keita scores again for sloppy Liverpool

It seemed for most of this season like Naby Keita’s first year in England would go down as a disappointment. The Guinea international has shown brief flashes of his immense talent, but not enough to justify a regular starting spot.

He now has two goals in as many games, and could have a key role to play in the most important part of Liverpool’s season. Even more impressive than his finish against Porto — the result of a lucky deflection — was his all-around play.

He had six tackles in the first half alone and was, as he always promised to be, the one Liverpool midfielder who looked like he might create something when carrying the ball forward from deep positions.

He couldn’t, however, entirely make up for a strange Liverpool performance. The Reds were comfortable for long stretches, but let the game slip away from them as the second half wore on. Porto will feel unlucky not to have scored.

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Jurgen Klopp does at least have one easy fix for the second leg: Drop Dejan Lovren. The Croatian’s selection came somewhat out of nowhere, especially with Joel Matip and a fit-again Joe Gomez on the bench.

He wasn’t horrible, but nor was he anywhere near as convincing, on the ball or off it, as Matip has been for most of the past few months. With Liverpool likely to play a more counter-attacking game in the away leg, dropping Lovren seems like a no-brainer.

Guardiola loves weird starting XIs

Guardiola has often been accused of overthinking his approach in big games, and the charge was leveled against him once more in north London on Tuesday, where Fabian Delph, Nicolas Otamendi and Riyad Mahrez all made the starting XI. It speaks to City’s strength in depth that players of that caliber are considered backups, but they’re backups all the same.

Possibly even more puzzling was City’s uncharacteristically cautious tactics. They’ve dominated Tottenham in the Premier League over the past couple of seasons, and they’ve done it by steadfastly adhering to their attacking instincts, but Guardiola seemed happy to play a more pragmatic game on Tuesday.

Perhaps Guardiola was showing off his pragmatic streak after City’s loss to Liverpool at this stage of the competition last season. They were blitzed at Anfield in the first leg in 2018, losing 3-0, and were never able to recover. And while it’s true Liverpool are a worse matchup for City than Tottenham, Tottenham are also an excellent team, and playing in their new stadium in Europe for the first time.

Even so, the approach didn’t work. Outside of Sergio Aguero’s early penalty miss, City created almost nothing in attack. They certainly have the fire power to respond in the second leg, but in the meantime there are plenty of question to be answered about their approach to this one.