Harry Redknapp has backed Tottenham to see off AC Milan in the Champions League.
Spurs travel to the San Siro for the first leg of their last-16 tie on Tuesday and Redknapp is confident the Italian champions will not be able to handle Harry Kane and his attacking team-mates.
“I’m sure Tottenham will beat them,” he told Standard Sport. “I think Tottenham are strong, I really do. I certainly think Tottenham are red hot favourites and quite rightly so to beat AC Milan. Tottenham will have too much for them.
“I couldn’t see them containing Harry Kane. [Dejan] Kulusevski, Richarlison: they’re full of quality. It’s a good Tottenham team that will be way too good for Milan.”
Milan are in turmoil and their form has collapsed since the World Cup.
They went seven games without a win before scraping past Torino with a 1-0 win on Friday night, having previously lost home and away to Chelsea in the Champions League group stage.
“Shocking,” Redknapp says of Milan’s performances against Chelsea. “I saw the games. I don’t see any way that Tottenham don’t go through. It would be a massive surprise.”
Redknapp, 75, was Spurs manager in 2011 when they made it past Milan in the same stage of the Champions League, winning 1-0 on aggregate thanks to a Peter Crouch away goal.
“They had some good players,” he recalls of Milan 12 years ago. “We wanted to keep it tight, which is what we did. With Aaron Lennon’s pace we broke away and Crouchy scored. It was a very good performance. To go there and win 1-0 was the perfect score-line.
“Then they came to White Hart Lane and dominated us. Clarence Seedorf ran the game. He was excellent that night but we defended well and came away with a 0-0 result. We did the job over the two legs.”
Ex-Scotland striker Joe Jordan played for Milan in the 1980s and was Redknapp’s first-team coach in 2011. Jordan was headbutted by Gennaro Gattuso as the game at the San Siro became heated.
“Joe speaks fluent Italian, having played in Italy,” says Redknapp. “His daughter is actually an English teacher in Milan now. They exchanged a few words in Italian, then it all kicked off. [Gattuso] was picking on the wrong bloke in Joe.
“You look at some of the quality players that played for them in those two games: they were very strong. Look at them now, they’re nowhere near that quality.”
