There was an Italian manager celebrating on the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium turf but it wasn’t Antonio Conte. Stefano Pioli was bouncing up in uncoordinated abandon. His compatriot wasn’t; not after the lamest and tamest of Champions League exits. Conte can seem the Tottenham manager who doesn’t want to manage Tottenham. They were largely unwatchable as what should have been a glamour game, against the seven-time European champions AC Milan, became a grind. But then increasingly a glamour appointment, in the serial Serie A winner, has brought a plodding joylessness to this part of north London.
There were reminders of what the night should have been. Steve Perryman was on the pitch at half-time. Tottenham’s record appearance-maker was an irregular scorer but, half a century ago, he scored a brace against AC Milan in a European semi-final. A decade before that, as the stadium announcer Pete Abbott highlighted, Spurs became the first English club to lift a European trophy. Their history is built on such feats, their identity too. There was a glory to it, a style, a romance. Not now.
