Key events
51 mins: Spurs have done absolutely nothing this half. A replay of that Kramaric penalty shout is pretty embarrassing for the Croatian.
50 mins: Kramaric goes down in search of a penalty, and stays there for a while after he fails to get it, but there’s nothing doing.
48 mins: Hoffenheim have started the half on the front foot. They’re not a hugely speedy or dynamic side, but they’re getting numbers forward and causing trouble as a result.
46 mins: Peeeeep! Football is once again being played. “This is a great matchup for neutrals like me who like to mash words together,” writes Peter Oh (brace yourself for what’s coming, reader). “I don’t care who wins, Hoffenham or Tottenheim, Hoffentotten or Heimham, Tottenhoffen or Hamheim.”
The players are back out! No halftimely changes by the look of things.
Half time: Hoffenheim 0-2 Tottenham
45+2 mins: And that’s pretty much the last kick of the half! Not completely convincing from Spurs, but in the circumstances they’ll take a two-goal lead and look grateful about it.
45+1 mins: Right at the end of stoppage time Hoffenheim make their best chance of the half, a pull-back that runs to Becker, in all sorts of space 15 yards out. He can pick his spot, and the spot he picks is Dragusin’s shin!
45 mins: Great save from Baumann! Spurs win a free-kick on the left, cross it into the area and Bergvall wins the header. He doesn’t head it cleanly but even so it takes an excellent diving stop to keep it out!
44 mins: Tottenham’s best move for a while is kick-started by Kulusevski and Bregvall exchanging backheels in their own half to beat the press, and pretty much ends when Richarlison’s pass, intended for Maddison, is hit straight into a defender.
40 mins: Hlozek’s shot is deflected towards Moerstedt. Dragusin absolutely throws himself at the ball but barely touches it with his head, and Moerstedt has a quick shot while off balance that Austin saves.
38 mins: The home side are having a bit of a spell. The win a corner, which is played short and then crossed straight into the arms of Austin. He spots Kulusevski on the halfway line and boots the ball down to him, and perhaps a goal would have resulted if the Swede were quite a lot quicker.
38 mins: The ball is played in to Stach, on the edge of a penalty area strangely devoid of defenders. But his first touch is poor, and Porro wins it.
36 mins: Most of the stats (obviously excluding the one that matters) are pretty much level. Uefa currently have possession at 50-50, Hoffenheim leading 163-159 on passes completed and 8-5 on total attempts. Spurs lead by two.
33 mins: Save! It’s a good low shot from Bischof, hit low to the right of Brandon Austin, but without great power and the keeper pushes it to safety.
31 mins: I don’t know if the microphones are broken or a sound engineer hasn’t got the balance right, but the crowd noise on the TV footage is really quiet and has been all game. There are lots of people, presumably Spurs fans at this stage, singing, but it’s a very faint background noise.
28 mins: From the corner Spurs break, and work it swiftly to the edge of the home side’s penalty area, but Becker does well to slide in and stop Maddison running onto it.
27 mins: Another corner. Bischof’s shot from really far out and really wide is deflected behind, which was pretty much the most he could hope to achieve with it.
26 mins: Hoffenheim win a corner. Bentancur heads it to the edge of the area, where a follow-up shot is deflected a couple of times and ends up at the feet of Moerstedt, who falls over backwards and demands a penalty. He doesn’t get one.
24 mins: The ball definitely did hit Bentancur’s hand, by the way, just before the second goal. He deflected it into himself with a knee, though, and it certainly wasn’t at all premeditated, or even meditated.
GOAL! Hoffenheim 0-2 Tottenham (Son, 22 mins)
A second! Maddison intercepts a Hoffenheim pass on halfway, turns and sees Son running into space. N’Soki can’t intercept the through-ball and a few moments later Kaderabek can’t block the shot – but he can deflect it in a cruel, looping arc over his keeper!
21 mins: The ball is played in to Hlozek. Bentancur gets back to divert the ball away from him, and Hoffenheim think he deliberately used a hand. VAR has a quick look and can’t find anything amiss.
19 mins: Son goes down on the left flank, rolls around in agony for approximately 0.7 seconds while he sees if the referee would buy the idea that he’d been actually fouled by Kaderabek, and then hops adroitly to his feet when he doesn’t.
16 mins: Spurs, without playing particularly fluently, are one up and could easily have had at least one other. This time Son cuts infield from the left and works himself a decent shooting chance, but can’t manage a decent shot.
14 mins: Chance for a second! Son passes to Porro, the centre-back N’Soki throws himself at the ball in an attempt to cut it out and is irrelevant when he fails, but given a free shot from the edge of the area Porro drags it wide.
12 mins: Richarlison’s low shot from 15 yards or so is firmly struck but straight at Baumann, who spills it down the middle of his area and gets away with it.
10 mins: Akpoguma gets booked for a quick tug of Maddison’s shirt after being turned in midfield.
9 mins: Richarlison’s early cross runs to Son beyond the far post, but from there Hoffenheim do well to deny both him and Maddison a chance to shoot, and eventually Bergvall overhits a pass out of play.
8 mins: A slightly half-hearted attack from the home side ends with Hlozek shooting into the legs of Dragusin.
6 mins: Well that is precisely the boost Spurs needed. Hoffenheim have won one game this season after falling behind. “Why do Hoffenheim have 10 subs while Spurs have only seven?” asks John. “Is it because Spurs only have 18 fit players?” Yes. And three of them are goalkeepers.
GOAL! Hoffenheim 0-1 Tottenham (Maddison, 4 mins)
An early goal! Baumann, the Hoffenheim keeper, boots the ball downfield but straight to Davies. It’s worked right to Porro and his long pass catches the home defence still in mild disarray after their keeper’s pass, and Maddison runs on to it, controls excellently, and finds the roof of the net!
3 mins: The first attack of any note ends with Richarlison sending in a cross with the outside of his right foot that is quite pretty but never likely to find a teammate.
1 min: Peeeep! Spurs get the game going.
Right then, all the preambles have been ambled and there’s nothing but a quick team huddle between us and kick-off.
Out come the players! I’m trying very hard to discern a spring in their step, but they’re probably just preserving their energy.
Ange Postecoglou seems fairly chipper as he speaks to TNT Sports pre-match:
It’s a big game for us. That’s what you love about Europe, they’re always big games. It’s mainly about staying calm, playing our football. We’ve done well in this competition and we need a win tonight to give us a real good chance of finishing in the top eight.”
“Tis a mite frustrating to see the spurs lineup tbh,” writes Peter Crosby. “I understand the argument to try to win this game and avoid extra games but Son looks and Kulusevski must be exhausted! Rest them! Let’s get our young guns in there and give them chances to shine. Build em up! Running these guys into the ground is proving disastrous.” I’m not sure. I think that given the injuries they’ve just got to keep playing. I think it’s whatever they’re doing in training or whatever they’ve done to offend the gods of fitness that are proving disastrous.
Hoffenheim’s stadium, the Rhein-Neckar Arena, has a capacity of 30,150, which is about 9.45 times the population of Hoffenheim. This is equivalent to Watford, for example, boasting a stadium that holds 967,000 people, or Leeds expanding Elland Road until it can fit just under 7.8 million people.
Glenn Hoddle picks out Adam Hlozek as the Hoffenheim player to watch, partly because “he’s got a left foot and a right foot”. And probably also because he’s the club’s joint top-scorer this season, has looked like a star in the making for several years and is still only 22.
I know what you’re thinking: is the Morten Krogh who is refereeing this game related to the Morten Krogh who reached the quarter-finals in the epee at the 1972 Olympics and won five national fencing championships in his native Norway? And perhaps also to the Trine Krogh who competed in the pool at the same Olympics, in the 200m and 400m medley? And, by extension, to her uncle, the Lars Krogh who won 15 Norwegian championship titles in freestyle swimming as well as 14 in water polo before becoming president of the Norwegian Swimming Association?
And the answer is, probably not. He’s not even Norwegian.
The teams!
Team news is in, and here are the starting line-ups:
Hoffenheim: Baumann, Kaderabek, Akpoguma, N’Soki, Jurasek, Stach, Becker, Hlozek, Bischof, Kramaric, Moerstedt. Subs: Luca Philipp, Hranac, Gendrey, Micheler, Kalambayi, Chaves, Mokwa, Behrens, Erlein, Tim Philipp, Djuric.
Tottenham Hotspur: Austin, Porro, Dragusin, Davies, Gray, Bergvall, Bentancur, Maddison, Kulusevski, Richarlison, Son. Subs: Forster, Whiteman, Lankshear, Moore, Ajayi, Olusesi, Hardy, Cassanova.
Referee: Morten Krogh (Denmark).
Hello world!
At this moment, when they are wrecked by self-doubt and stink of the foul funk of failure, the footballing fates have handed Spurs the precious gift of encouraging fixtures. Sure, they played the first of those, against an Everton team that had scored one goal in their previous six league games, on Sunday and managed to make their opponents look like the 1970 Brazil side, concede three and lose, but they have a chance to make up for it (kind of) tonight, and another against Leicester this weekend. Their season can still come good (or, at least, better).
Hoffenheim, 15th in the Bundesliga, three points above 16th-placed Heidenheim and the threat of a relegation play-off, have lost six and won just one of their last 10 games in all competitions, that solitary victory coming against 17th-placed Holstein Kiel on Saturday. “I play football because I want to win, and when you don’t win for so long, it really gets you down,” said the defender Kevin Akpoguma. “In the changing room after the game, you could feel that a weight had been lifted. After a win, everything is just nicer. A win always energises you, that’s been noticeable in the past few days too. But we can’t ease off now, we need to keep it up. It’s important that we all develop a hunger for it, so that we have this feeling much more often.”
Of their own last 10 games Spurs have won three and lost a mere five. On form, this is no contest. And yet. One problem is that Spurs have only 13 first-team players to choose from, with Pape Sarr added to the injury list after the Everton game. This makes Ange Postecoglou’s job easier, because the team more or less picks itself, and also harder, because it is more likely to be rubbish and there is less he can do about it if it is.
“The reality is we don’t have a lot of choice,” the Australian growled. “We’ve no other options, that’s the basic premise of it. We’ve probably got 13 first-team players who’ve travelled. We don’t have many options, apart from throwing untried youngsters in there but I don’t want to do that to them. You really need a strong squad of players and keep them healthy to cope with playing in Europe if you do well in the cup competitions like we have, because it’s not manageable when you’ve got three games a week for the length of time we have.”
So here we are. Two desperate teams. One game. Tottenham, in ninth place and outside the automatic progress spots only on goal difference, will move into the top eight if they win and get to feel decent for a bit. Hoffenheim, in 27th, surely need to win at least one and lose neither of their last two Europa League fixtures if they are to have any hope even of a playoff place. It is, in its slightly miserable way, a massive, potentially season-shaping game. Welcome!
