For Tottenham Hotspur, Europa League glory is about more than just Champions League qualification

It may not have been the longest trophy-dried in England, but the 17-year-old waiting time of Tottenham Hotspur on silverware was most drunk through the name. The inability to collect the medals of the winners is greatly cleaned up despite their steps in most of two decades, and there are many steps to talk about. Since Spurs won the EFL Cup in 2008, they played their very first UEFA Champions League season (2010-11), became as second place in the Premier League (2016-17) and reached the Champions League final (2019).

The story has been clear – those performance can be important, but without a trophy there is an asterisk next to them. It would be difficult to blame the players and manager of Spurs for the moment of Catharsis they experienced on Wednesday in Bilbao, when their well-documented trophy-dried was finally ending by beating Manchester United in the UEFA Europa League final. Take it from James Maddison, who was one of the selection framework of the new look Tottenham by Ange Postecoglou when he participated in the summer of 2023.

“When I came to Tottenham, you know what it’s like,” he said at the CBS Sports broadcast after the final. “Everyone just goes,” he has withdrawn from winning all the trophies, “and I said to my father, I told my best partner,” I’m going to lift silverware for Tottenham “and listen. I try not to make this crazy story, but I fully believed that I could come and we could create something that could.”

Few could reasonably claim that the match was entertaining or well played, the images of a European final that was unable to hide the fact that the 16th and 17th best teams in England faced each other. Yet Spurs had their heroic moments, albeit unexpectedly for a team that generally prefers an attack -oriented approach. The game-winning goal of Brennan Johnson felt more like a gift from the wobbly defense of United, while the defense of Spurs stole the show.

Micky van de Ven’s Acrobatic Goal Line statement was perhaps the biggest moment of individual sparkle in the San Mames Stadium, while goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicaro’s rescue in the last moments of the game on Luke Shaw was the type of Make-Or-Break moment that finals were taken. Richarlison, the often claimed striker who earned a start on Wednesday, has even submitted an impressive defensive shift that will be reminded for years by the Spurs Faithful.

The unexpected character of their victory is perhaps suitable for a Tottenham team that offered memories for a large part of the season how far they have slipped since the days of their second place Premier League finish and run to the Champions League final. Of course, Spurs still have a few world class players on the Roster-Center Backs of the Ven and Cristian Romero are both individually brilliant and a great pair, while Captain Son Heung-Min remains one of the best attackers of his generation. The simplest recognition to make this Spurs team, however, is that they were deeply inadequate from a tactical perspective and had a lot of work in the summer, with or without a place in the edition of the Champions League of the following season.

The Europa League triumph on Wednesday, as well as their European campaign as a whole, was also an example of one thing that this version of Tottenham has consistently become good. Look no further than the now famous quote from Postecoglou that he always wins trophies in his second year, a source of feed that served as a Taunt. The chatter of all this is difficult to resist, especially now that Postecoglou was proven well, but his frankness was a relief at Spurs, even if it was daring by his own admission.

“It has been the most difficult few years I had in my career and I knew it was because I knew what I was starting, you know?” Postecoglou said in an interview with CBS Sports after the game. “This football club had managers of world class and much better certified than me and I couldn’t get there, so I knew I had a huge challenge for me.”

The names that came before Postecoglou came – such as Mauricio Pochettino, Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte – and those who came before Maddison – such as Harry Kane and Gareth Bale – made this group an impossible candidate for European main prize. Yet there was an impressive zeal to change a story they inherited. The specific CV of Postecoglou may forced people to wrongly underestimate him, because managers with a global route and without European roots rarely achieve performance such as these.

“If you are talking about them, many players have not been here that long, so it is almost like an incentive to be the group to change that,” Maddison noted. “The Gaffer, to be honest for him, since he came in, he always said – he pointed in our dressing room in the Spurs Ground, they have all the walls of the teams at Spurs who have won trophies and they are all black and white and they are all old and he has always made a thing to say:” Go on that wall. “

On the way, Postecoglou has had to rely on a remarkable number of players, in which 33 players played at least one game while Spurs managed an injury crisis of epic proportions. There were days when they really felt like a RAG tag team, making it easy to underestimate them. This is where the manager’s greatest strength lies – he maintained a sense of togetherness that has never really cracked. Unlike many top teams in seasons with many more victories than theirs, they appeared as a unit.

“Of course we want to win for the Gaffer,” Van de Ven Told British GQ In an interview for the final. “Everyone knows he said he always wins things in his second year [at a club]. It is a nice quote for him and it would make it even more beautiful if we could let it happen! He has been so positive throughout the season and made sure that nobody ever lets down his head, even when we played a terrible game. We have never had the feeling that he is giving us up; He always keeps pushing us. That is why we still believe at the end of a difficult season that we will win. “

Sport was always about a mix of the tangible and intangible assets and the traces of Postecoglou have almost made up for the shortage in the first with an abundance in the last category. Few would argue for this as a sustainable strategy, but for a team that is determined by their inability to win trophies, that is little worries. There is a reason why Johnson said: “I don’t care” or his game-winning goal should belong to him or if his own goal should be classified-this specific moment really doesn’t matter.

The Europa League victory of Spurs is the last example of the romance of sport in a season full of them, especially in England. Hungen was not the only trophy drought that ended-Newcastle United ended their 56-year waiting time for a title with the EFL Cup, while Crystal Palace won their very first trophy with the FA Cup on Saturday. The unlikely journey from Postecoglou from Australia to Europe is such an example, just like Tottenham’s perseverance, despite a season full of tests and trials. There is also the long-awaited reward for the old steward of the team, son who ended his own trophy-dried.

Son is in itself an underdog story, which comes from a nation that is not considered a hub for football stars and mapped out his own way to the highest levels of the game. He was also wrongly in Kane’s shadow for a large part of his career, but if someone really embodies the club, it is. He was just as crucial for Tottenham’s success almost ten years ago as a Kane and stayed around long enough to become the captain. He is just as deserved as someone from an award to match his status as an elitental talent, and his moment of catharsis is just as important. A successful season and a great season can be two different things, but even if traces were poor in the course of the campaign, there is also something objectively great about a moment like this.

“Let’s say I’m a legend, why not,” he told TNT Sports. “Only today. Nobody did it in 17 years. Today is the day. Today I will say that I am a legend of the club. Let’s enjoy it. It feels great, it is what I have always dreamed for. It came true. I am the happiest man in the world.”