Years removed from the peak of their glory days under Diego Simeone, it comes as little surprise when Atletico Madrid’s coach takes a more cautious approach about his team’s hopes in the UEFA Champions League. He offered a reminder in a press conference on Monday that Atleti made it to the round of 16 via the knockout phase playoffs, the fourth-best team in the league phase awaiting them for Tuesday’s first leg in Madrid. He said, as a matter of fact, that his side “are not favorites,” but if the label does not fit them, it is as close to a misnomer as it gets for Tottenham Hotspur, a team in full-blown crisis.
Simeone is not factually incorrect about Spurs’ exploits — a favorable league phase draw and the Premier League’s inherent might over its European counterparts, especially the middling ones, means they soared to fourth place, qualifying directly for the round of 16 in the process. Since Spurs closed out their league phase campaign with a 2-0 win at Eintracht Frankfurt, though, a lot has changed. They have not won once in their six games since the trip to Germany, picking up a single point in a surprise 2-2 draw with Manchester City, fired the coach who averaged just 1.1 points per game in the Premier League, and … got worse.
Their unimpressive five-point cushion above the relegation zone the day Thomas Frank was fired has since been trimmed down to a flimsy one-point advantage, losing all three matches since ex-Juventus coach Igor Tudor succeeded Frank. One could theoretically excuse Tudor’s shortcomings in his opening match, a 4-1 loss to league leaders Arsenal, but the new coach’s influence is hard to spot, even if the sample size is small.
How to watch Atletico Madrid vs. Tottenham Hotspur, odds
- Date: Tuesday, March 10 | Time: 4 p.m. ET
- Location: Metropolitano Stadium — Madrid, Spain
- Live stream: Paramount+
- Odds: Atletico Madrid -195; Draw +350; Tottenham Hotspur +500
Simeone offered a reminder of what Tudor’s teams are supposed to look like, describing him as a coach “who has always set up his teams to play with an offensive thought.” Even when accounting for Spurs’ unimpressively assembled squad, “offensive thought” is nowhere to be found — Spurs averaged 11 shots a game under tactical pragmatist Frank and have not been all that much better in three games under Tudor, nor have they exceeded Frank’s average of one expected goal per match in any real sense. It is one thing to put up low figures against defense-oriented Arsenal, but in subsequent matches against Fulham and Crystal Palace — games that a relegation-threatened team has to believe are winnable — meaningful attacking results have been hard to spot.
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They have had their moments since Tudor took charge – they were level with Arsenal at halftime and had a late burst of shots, while Dominic Solanke’s goal against Crystal Palace on Thursday provided a flicker of hope before a 3-1 defeat. Really though, moments of positivity have been in shockingly short supply, Spurs personifying brain fog. They appear disjointed and checked out at times, as if players are slowly withdrawing from the game as a coping mechanism for how unexpectedly poorly the season has gone. Few have stepped up to shake the team out of their funk — Micky van de Ven was sent off for pulling Ismaila Sarr to the ground in the penalty area, a sloppy error from a player whose game is supposed to be cleaner than that. Moments later, goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario was slow to react to Sarr’s goal as Palace took a 3-1 lead, earning an earful from defender Pedro Porro after the fact.
Tudor has not managed to correct Spurs’ defensive issues, the team conceding nine goals in three games, their organization in the back appearing worse with each match. Spurs were not sitting pretty beforehand in that regard, but they are far away from Frank’s average of 1.6 goals against per game. The issue technically pre-dates Tudor and Frank — Ange Postecoglou was fired last May for a lack of defensive resilience that ensured they would finish 17th in the Premier League, but Postecoglou was without van de Ven and Cristian Romero through injury for much of the season and deprioritized domestic play en route to the UEFA Europa League title. Frank did not have the fitness excuse, but Romero has been unavailable for all of Tudor’s tenure so far through suspension, though both he and van de Ven will be available on Tuesday in Madrid. It just might make a difference.
“He has missed a lot, but he has been doing a lot,” Tudor said about Romero. “He has been working with the fitness coach and doing a lot of running to be in a top condition. Now he can show that he is a leader.”
Romero and van de Ven are arguably Spurs’ best players, but it only ramps up the pressure on the group as a whole to finally offer onlookers – a list that includes ex-Spurs boss and current U.S. men’s national team head coach Mauricio Pochettino, according to The Athletic – a source of optimism. As talented as they are, the center backs have been mistake-prone, which brings the conversation back to Tudor.
Spurs’ misfortune is not of his creation, but he accepted the task of rescuing them from the hole they dug themselves in. The squad assembled by sporting director Johan Lange is very obviously not designed to compete for a top-five finish in the Premier League, even if that was Lange’s intention. This, though, is not a team that should be in 17th place in the Premier League. It seems as if Tudor has yet to find a cohesive idea to build this team around, losing valuable time with a team that cannot waste it.
The Champions League, theoretically, offers Spurs and Tudor a clean slate. The baggage of the Premier League table need not apply. There’s no relegation race to worry about, suspensions to their top-tier center backs are completely irrelevant. It is the perfect opportunity to begin turning things around, at least in terms of a strong performance, even if the right result might elude them against an Atleti team that remains competitive in Europe. If the group cannot turn things around, though, it forces questions about Tudor’s suitability to the job he signed up for — and will only add another layer of panic for a team that’s already in panic mode.
