SPURS DEFENDER TOBY Alderweireld has played in the Champions League final before and is determined to win against Liverpool this time after the disappointment of defeat in 2014.
The Belgium international was at Atletico Madrid at the time and came on in the last ten minutes to shut the game down for Diego Simeone’s men, who lead 1-0 at the time.
Sadly for Atleti, Real came back through a Sergio Ramos header before running out 4-1 winners after extra time.
He is hell bent on not feeling the grief he felt at that time and says his team mates are right alongside him.
“We were so close to winning it,” Alderweireld told reporters on Wednesday.
“Ramos scored in the 90th minute or something so, yeah, the feeling of losing, not winning it is very hard.
“It was [difficult to deal with] because I was 25 years old. It was a strange moment.
“Everyone is saying it is unbelievable about Spurs getting to the final but we’re not happy with playing a final – we want to win it.”
In order to win it, Tottenham must play at their best and their stopper says they’ve been training like animals to bring the trophy to north London.
“In the last couple of weeks we’ve been training like animals,” the 30-year-old continued.
We’re trying to give our best every day because that is the way we need to work to be in the right state for the final. Everybody wants to be there, to be involved and give their best, and the final is not going to start on Saturday – it started two weeks ago.”
Although this is Spurs first Champions League final, many of their players, including Alderweireld, played in the World Cup semi-finals last summer.
He believes this experience will stand them in good stead in Madrid on Saturday.
“I think we have quite a mature group so I don’t have to talk too much, but I think just to stay calm and do the normal things.
“A lot of players have played in really big games, World Cups and stuff like this, so we know what to do. Of course, the tension will get more as the week goes on but we have the maturity in our group and that is not a problem.”
Gavan Casey is joined by Murray Kinsella and Sean Farrell for a review of the 2018/19 season, and cast an eye forward to next year and the Rugby World Cup in Japan.:
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“upset the natural flow of the game”. can’t agree with that. you have lads throwing themselves on the ground left, right and centre which is far more disruptive in my opinion, especially in the bigger knockout games when they’re a goal up. sure they had water breaks in some matches in the last World Cup which went by almost unnoticed. time for the video ref.
Also it should be easy enough to moderate the use of video techology. I.e limit the number of times it can be referred to in a game…. each coach can call for a video replay three times and no more!
About time but I would rather see it use for cheating and simulation
You can nearly tell by looking up that Barcaloni19 page on youtube that you would get 9/11 conspiracy clips in the suggested videos. Short memories, he seems to forget the second leg at Stamford Bridge only the year before.
All club have been stung over the years by bad decisions but when it’s costs a team a trophy/promotion or indeed regelation it can be hard to swallow .
If ever there was a club that benefited from extremely dubious refereeing, Barcelona is it.
The farce at Stamford Bridge
The Thiago Motta red card with Busquets peeking through his hands to see if he could stop rolling around yet
Van Persie’s second yellow for playing the ball after as the whistle was blown
And then from this tie, the Suarez non-red, the Iniesta non-red and the Torres sending off.
You lost all credibility when you said Torres was harshly sent off last week.
In that inter game the goal Barcelona got was actually offside so if they had video ref back then that goal wouldn’t have stood, and also the ridiculous motta red card would never have happened
They weren’t in the video so clearly didn’t happen.
3 for the manager is too many. Its been in hockey for a few years at the high level and only now is it really a very good system without issue of bias or unfair advantage. Currently, each team has one video refferral, which they keep if they are proven correct or in the case of “no decision possible”. When the team refers and they are mistaken, they lose the referral. Teams must refer immediately after the incident (within 3 seconds i think) and it has to be close to a goalscoring event (can’t be at midfield). It goes upstairs to a ref who avails of different camera replays. There are still instances when cameras don’t pick up the incident or it is unclear what happened although football games have so many cameras this might not be an issue. Also, there are still complaints to referees even after video referrals! In football there would be issues surrounding interpretation – handball/ball to hand for instance but these would simply have to be cleared up by rules committees. I think aswell that referees own referrals would be useful but in rugby these are taken too much in my opinion. The system works well, there is usually 3 or 4 refferals a game and they are swift and exciting. I think it would work. 6 a game would be hefty and would lead to a scenario whereby there would be a refferal by a winning defensive team over a free kick the last minute purely to waste time/stop momentum type of thing. This is not attractive to see.
Trust no one
Didn’t need last night to prove this. Just the last 30 years of diving, cheating, handballs etc etc etc