When everyone had gathered breath, the only surprise was that Tottenham had run Galatasaray so close. There was certainly little shock in the fact that these particular teams contrived a wild, breathless encounter whose openness could have lent itself to a cricket score. Such a tally would have run in the home side’s favour had they converted a seemingly endless string of chances, Victor Osimhen spurning enough openings for a double hat-trick, and the patched up nature of Spurs’s side was only partly an excuse for their inability to assert any control.
Osimhen had to content himself with two first-half goals and, in the end, Galatasaray won because they were just about clinical enough before the interval. They fluffed their lines frequently thereafter and Ange Postecoglou was correct that Tottenham, down to 10 men for the final half-hour, improbably looked the likelier scorers in the dying moments. If Dejan Kulusevski had taken the chance to catch out the goalkeeper Fernando Muslera during added time, Galatasaray’s unwillingness to apply the handbrake would have been shown up.
