Tottenham knocked out of Europa League quarter-finals

With the absence of Son Heung-min, Tottenham Hotspur suffered a huge loss to Dinamo Zagreb, failing to qualify for the Europa League quarter-finals. Tottenham lost 3-0 to Dinamo at the Maksimir Stadium in Croatia on Thursday local time.

Tottenham had a two-goal advantage over Dinamo thanks to their 2-0 victory in the first leg. The value of Tottenham’s squad is about 918 billion won, six times higher than 139 billion won of Dinamo’s squad, which means Tottenham have more expensive star players than the Croatian club. Furthermore, Dinamo were in disarray after their manager Zoran Mamic stepped down following his sentence for fraud.

Tottenham, however, have been knocked out of the Europa League 3-2 on aggregate. Dinamo’s Mislav Orsic (picture), who played in the K League 1 between 2015 and 2019, led his team to a victory with hat-trick.

Orsic took his team to the quarter-finals by scoring a stunning hat-trick, two in the second half and one in extra time. Orsic, who is only 178 centimeters tall but has good footwork and shooting ability, played for Jeonnam Dragons between 2015 and 2016, and Ulsan Hyundai between 2017 and 2018 in K League 1. The Croatian forward made 28 goals and 15 assists in total in 101 matches in the Korea football league.

Tottenham put Harry Kane, Son’s favorite partner, in the front line with Lucas Moura and Dele Ali in the middle. However, Kane was guarded by defense and the entire squad showed lackluster performance. Tottenham manager Jose Mourinho urged players to fight to win after the first half and criticized players after the game by saying “professionalism starts exactly in the attitude” and Dinamo “beat us on attitude” Tottenham fans, however, criticized Mourinho as much as players for his lack of tactics, saying Mourinho does nothing on the bench and he should be replace immediately. It has not been a successful season for Tottenham as it has been knocked out of the Europa League quarterfinals and remained in 8th place in the Premier League.


Won-Hong Lee bluesky@donga.com