adminLONDON. — Tottenham Hotspur have bitter recent experiences at Wembley but will try to make the stadium a home from home as they begin their second Champions League soccer campaign against AS Monaco tonight a few miles away from their own ground.
The north London club have sold 80 000 tickets for their Group E opener — boasting that the crowd will be the biggest home attendance for an English club in the competition.
They moved their Champions League matches to Wembley because their atmospheric White Hart Lane Stadium has been reduced to a 31 000 capacity for its final season while a new 60 000-seat arena is built adjacent to their current ground. Next season they will use the national stadium for all their fixtures as the old ground is bulldozed.
Whether the vast expanse of Wembley will inspire Tottenham any more than the opposition is the big question, however, and it has not been a particularly happy hunting ground.
Of the five matches Spurs have played at the new Wembley, only once did they triumph, against Chelsea in the 2008 League Cup final, with each subsequent visit ending in disappointment.
The “old” Wembley was also used by Arsenal for Champions League games in 1998 and 1999 and they hardly made it a fortress, winning twice, losing three times and drawing once before abandoning the experiment.
For the past year Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham side have certainly played football worthy of a big stage.
They qualified automatically for the group phase of the Champions League after finishing third in the Premier League last season, having pushed title-winning Leicester City hardest until they buckled under pressure at the death. Early indications are that the squad will be challenging hard again at the top of the table with Saturday’s 4-0 win away to Stoke City their best performance of the season so far.— Reuters.
Online Reporter