Guardian on-line 26-9-16 by David Hytner
Toby Alderweireld can still feel the stab of regret. Perhaps it will never truly leave him. After all, how many times can a player come within touching distance of the European Cup only to see it whisked away? The Tottenham Hotspur defender had entered the 2014 final as an 83rd-minute substitute for Atlético Madrid and
with stoppage time almost over, they were 1-0 up against their city rivals, Real.
Then Sergio Ramos made a run that took him across four Atlético defenders and on to Luka Modric’s corner kick. He timed his leap and the header to perfection and everybody connected to Atlético can still see the ball knifing its way into the far corner of their net. Real would
win 4-1 in extra time.
“Of course it hurts,” Alderweireld says. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to win the
Champions League. We gave everything in the 90 minutes and, after that, extra time was difficult for us. I look back at the whole season and not only the final – we had won La Liga the previous weekend and two days after the final, I was preparing for the World Cup with Belgium. I’ve tried to look at it that way – not only the negatives. But, of course, it hurts if you talk about it.”
Alderweireld was reminded that night at Estádio da Luz in Lisbon of the importance of ruthlessness and looking after the smallest of details. However, he took a more general point away from Atlético’s run to the final, which had carried them past Milan, Barcelona and Chelsea in the
knockout rounds, and it is one that bolsters his conviction before Tottenham’s Champions League Group E tie at
CSKA Moscow on Tuesday night.
“It’s that every team can win the Champions League if you put your mind on it,” Alderweireld says. “If you have a good squad and the hunger is there to win something, you can do it. At Atlético we had the big teams like Barça, Real, Bayern Munich – they were always the favourites. But if you are a really good group, and, of course, we had quality, too – you can win it. That’s the thing that has stayed with me.”
Alderweireld is not saying that Tottenham can win the Champions League this season, merely that they ought to approach what is a daunting assignment at CSKA without an underdog complex. “We have to be confident in our quality and confident that we can get the result against any team,” he adds. “We don’t have to look too far into the future, just game by game and try to go to the next round.”
Leonid Slutsky’s CSKA are unbeaten in the Russian Premier League since last April – a run of 16 matches – and they made a promising start to their Champions League campaign with
a 2-2 draw at Bayer Leverkusen, having been 2-0 down. The game against Spurs will take place at the new, 30,000-capacity Arena CSKA, which opened on 10 September.
Alderweireld has played in Moscow before – for an Ajax team that also featured his Tottenham colleagues Jan Vertonghen and Christian Eriksen. It was March 2011 and they lost 3-0 to Spartak Moscow to depart the last 16 of the Europa League 4-0 on aggregate.
That was a hostile occasion and Alderweireld anticipates more of the same against CSKA. Russian clubs have long made the most of their home advantage. “Why? It’s the atmosphere,” he says. “But if I compare to that Ajax team – we were all very young, whereas now we know in the Premier League how to play difficult away games. Nobody is scared to play here and to play our own game. We know that there is a little bit more pressure on us because we
lost our first game at home to Monaco but I’m very confident.”
Tottenham will bring about 250 fans and they have advised them not to wear club colours in the city.
After the violence between England and Russia followers at Euro 2016, there is the risk of tension. It was put to Alderweireld that he might expect to feel it. “It’s difficult for me to tell but in Russia it’s always like this, especially Champions League games,” he says. “We only have to focus on the pitch. The rest is not in our hands.”
Alderweireld has matured since his Champions League final appearance for Atlético. He excelled on a season-long loan at Southampton and since his
£11.4m move to Tottenham in July of last year, he has been the cornerstone of the Premier League’s most frugal defence in terms of goals conceded. At international level, the 27-year-old has also come to be considered as the heir apparent to [Emirates Marketing Project’s] Vincent Kompany in the Belgium team.
“At Ajax, I got an education in how to be confident on the ball, my technique, and then, at Atlético, I learned how to defend,” Alderweireld says. “It was about the details, the ruthlessness; be clinical in front of your own goal, win every duel, be clever. I learned so much and, defensively, I grew there so much.
“Diego Simeone [the Atlético manager] taught me to enjoy clean sheets. Even if it’s 3-0 or 4-0, like it was
at Stoke two weeks ago, the thing is to get the clean sheet, to get good numbers. You take that mentality all the way [to the full-time whistle] and you take it to the next game. Always be focused and never let it go – that’s something I’ve learned so much. I learned that from Simeone.”
Simeone is two years older than the Tottenham manager, Mauricio Pochettino, and the pair played together for Argentina. “They both like to have a team that works very hard,” Alderweireld says. “And they work us very hard. The pressing is similar as well. There are differences. Pochettino likes to play from the back, with the buildup, have the ball. But they are both winners. They want to win everything. They want to win every game.”
