Cold and Conflicts

It was a night of cold and a night of conflicts as the Spurs (who my relatives in Greece and Cyprus support from a distance) met the Grecian greens of Panathinaikos (the team we all follow over there.) Not to be confused with Olympiakos, their biggest rivals, who I was actually supporting the other night when they played Arsenal, our biggest rivals. Pick the bones out of that one. I certainly can’t; my hands are still numb, which is the only thing helping me forget about the cold.

For a long time last night, Panathinaikos forgot about the cold too. Beware Greeks wearing gloves. They might have seemed like easy meat after 3-0 defeats in their other two away group games, coming into a freezing, wet North London night needing a win to get through, but they can be quite Spartan when they have to. Remember the Euros.

It took almost half-an-hour of sloooooooow, seemingly endless possession before we broke through their defence, another lovely little through-ball from Clint allowing Ade to slot us into a position of relative comfort. After all, we only needed a draw. But as we all know, it’s when we’re comfortable that we’re at our most vulnerable (as well as when we’re under intense pressure, needless to say) and it was from their first serious period of pressure in the whole match that we found ourselves pegged back and on the brink. Until then, the night’s only anxiety came when the stadium announcer saw Triantafyllopoulos and Christodoulopoulos on the team sheet.

It looked for the next 20 minutes that history might repeat itself, that Spurs-supporting Panathinaikos coach Juan Ramon Rocha (like this really needed another angle to it) might despatch us from the competition. I know how he must have felt. But thanks to Clint’s bullet-header, the bar and Karnezis’ backside, we restored order. Jermain put a bit of gloss on it with a cheeky chip thanks to Azza’s blistering run and angled pass.

And so it could be one of the Champions League dropout teams that we face after coming through the group in second place. The disallowed goals against a hugely defensive Lazio at the Lane now matter a bit more, as do the lacklustre draws in Maribor and Athens. But the main thing is, we’re there – and for all our supposed greater quality, we weren’t last year. So Spurs go through with a bit of hope, Panathinaikos go out with a bit of pride. As things start to get better for them in the league, it’s good to know that there’s a Spurs fan at the heart of it – and there’ll be a few others wishing them well from a little further away too.