First-half, not final call cost Tottenham two points in UCL vs Sporting

We may all long remember the thrill and agony of Harry Kane‘s overturned game-winner, but it was in the first-half when Tottenham dropped points against Sporting CP. 

Hopefully, it will not be the last home Champions League game for Tottenham Hotspur this season, as the draw against Sporting feels like we were shortchanged as fans. Of course, there was the elephant in the room, the disallowed VAR goal, but a first-half performance to forget put Spurs in a bind, to begin with.

First-half frolic was not good enough from Tottenham

It is not that Spurs were particularly poor in the first half, as they were neither good nor bad, Tottenham played. The team looked like they were playing an afterschool match with their mates, where the loser took a ribbing for a day, but there was always tomorrow. In other words, Spurs lacked urgency in any form for not the first time this season.

There was no place the lack of urgency was more prevalent than in Sporting’s goal from Marcus Edwards. There were no less than three poor defensive plays made by Tottenham on top of some lackluster goalkeeping.

Sporting’s goal started near midfield, with Eric Dier making his third mental error in as many games as he came in late on a tackle. Worse than Dier’s lateness, he missed the tackle completely, not even picking up a foul; he was just beaten.

Then instead of working to get back into position, Pierre Hojbjerg went for a tackle as well, performing as poorly as Dier had moments before in the process, leaving a second player behind the ball.

At this point, the two lynchpins to the center of Spur’s defense were picking themselves off the ground as Sporting was attacking with a numbers advantage.

Compounding the poor defending, there was no communication between Matt Doherty and Cristian Romero, meaning both stayed with a single attacker, and neither stepped to stop Marcus Edwards from attacking from right to left on the dribble.

With no one stepping to stop him from shooting and given the time and space to set his feet, Marcus Edwards unleashed a low drive from about 24 yards out.

Maybe a season or two ago, Hugo Lloris could have deflected the ball wide, but the current iteration of Lloris was late and short, as Edwards’s ball hit the side of the net, and Sporting took the lead.

Tottenham had held most of the possession to that point but never saw a look as clean as the Spurs gifted Edwards.

Spurs did rally and fight back to tie and seemingly win the game in the end, only to have the victory snatched away by VAR. However, we should remember, and hopefully so will the players, that VAR would have been irrelevant if they had performed in the first 45 minutes the way they did in the last 45 minutes.

If Tottenham has learned that lesson, then maybe they can right the ship and win on the road in the League and Europe. If not, a difficult month could get much worse.