Tottenham crashed out of the Champions League and the manner that the London club exited from the last 16 was humbling. The first leg saw the Spurs bowing before the Red Bull Leipzig, 1-0, and the German snatched the win away from home. Leipzig captured the second match in Germany, 3-0, and the loss suffered by the English team pointed to many things.
First, the Spurs that Leipzig defeated were not the same from the squad that reached the UCL Finals last year. The key players are no longer around and those who remain could only muster a shadow of what they were capable of. It is no wonder the team can only do so much as their German foe romped away with an aggregate 4-0 win, thus advancing to the next round.
The defeat marked the end of an era for the Spurs, which The Guardian said saw its beginning in the last year of former boss Mauricio Pochettino. Jose Mourinho tried his best to reverse the slide but as the last match showed, it has come to a full collapse and there is no telling how and when the team will be able to recover.
"These are the sorts of losses that only the very elite clubs can weather for long. And at present Tottenham are nobody's idea of that," said the report.
Picking up the pieces will be a long process for the club that will need to rediscover hope and confidence. Practically speaking, Tottenham will need to recruit new players and the buildup is not expected to be completed in just one or two transfer windows.
In other words, seeing the Tottenham of the old days will take some time to happen, The Guardian report said.
How bad the current situation is can be summed up by the fact that the Spurs have yet to win in the last six games and the club was eliminated from the Champions League by a young German club, formed only 10 years ago.
The latest loss also underscored that Mourinho's success stories at the Champions League are coming to an end. BBC said the debacle tells the story of the Portuguese manager getting the boot early in the UCL knockout game and his misfortunes traced back to 2014.
The long stretch of disappointments for Mourinho in Europe's most prestigious competition seemed to indicate of below-par performance but this is the same man who steered two different clubs to Champions League titles.
Technically, the UCL runner up last season can still quality in the competition in the next campaign. That will require finishing in the Premier League inside of the Top 4, which is like seven points away. It seems easy but winning is hard to come by these days for the Spurs, BBC said.
