Spurs fulfilled Redknapp's promise to 'have a go at them' with a performance of discipline and imagination
A year in which they celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Double-winning team, a week in which they were denied the chance to move to a new home, a night on which they proved that they are not in the last 16 of the Champions League merely to make up the numbers: these are remarkable times for Tottenham Hotspur.
In order to take home a result from San Siro on Tuesday night they had to produce a performance against Milan ? even a Milan shorn of historic virtues ? that lived up to Harry Redknapp's promise to "have a go at them" while exemplifying a wily old coach's approach to the familiar problems facing Premier League teams in Europe.
The way they coped, with common sense and focused intensity, gave a solid ring to the "Harry for England" claims. This was proper coaching, the sort of careful preparation associated with Jos� Mourinho: an imaginative deployment of resources in order to meet a particular set of demands, fuelled by a carefully measured dose of motivation.
Spurs pressed Milan back from the start, while isolating Clarence Seedorf and ensuring that the Dutch veteran had the minimum of possession with which to feed Robinho and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. When Seedorf did get hold of the ball, he was harried and smothered so effectively that Massimiliano Allegri was forced to withdraw him at half-time. This was already a major victory over a team who, not so very long ago, could choose their playmaker from a squad including not only Seedorf and Pirlo (absent through injury) but Kak� and Manuel Rui Costa.
From front to back, Redknapp had his team playing in highly effective pairs. On the right, Aaron Lennon and Vedran Corluka gave Luca Antonini nightmares in the first half. On the left, Steven Pienaar and Rafael van der Vaart ? who, since the South African arrived at White Hart Lane in January, had played not a single minute of a match together before Tuesday evening ? moved and combined so well in their swift exchanges. The two of them seldom needed the assistance of Beno�t Assou-Ekotto, the usually adventurous left-back, in order to triangulate their way around and through the home defence.
But arguably the couple who exerted the greatest effect on the course of the match were the least heralded. Redknapp has often seemed unsure about Wilson Palacios, a �12m signing from Wigan two years ago last month, while Sandro, bought from Internacional last March for �8m, has taken time to assert himself. Sandro had made six starts this season before being included in the line-up at San Siro, and only three of those had been in partnership with Palacios.
In the event, the 26-year-old Honduran and 21-year-old Brazilian quickly fused themselves into a formidable double pivot at the heart of the team. Two powerful, muscular athletes, they screened opponents and won the ball with strength and energy, protecting the defence while providing a trampoline for those ahead of them.
This was not quite the sort of performance we used to see from Arsenal's Patrick Vieira and Gilberto Silva or Liverpool's Xabi Alonso and Javier Mascherano. There were no long-striding excursions into the forward areas or laser-guided 40-yard passes to the front men. This was more like a pairing of the dogged Silva and the hard-tackling Mascherano. Allegri's selection, in which the unadventurous Thiago Silva was shunted up from centre-back to play between Gennaro Gattuso and Mathieu Flamini in the midfield trio, made their task a little easier.
Behind them, Michael Dawson and William Gallas coped brilliantly with Milan's Swedish-Brazilian front pairings, even after Pato replaced Seedorf and Robinho disappeared into the hole. When Ibrahimovic shoved Dawson away before hooking the ball into the net three minutes into second-half injury time, only to have his strike immediately annulled by the referee's whistle, it was one of several tacit admissions that Redknapp had prevailed in a contest he was probably expected to lose. Gallas was able to concentrate on using his formidable powers of anticipation to block the remaining channels.
There were two soloists in this ensemble performance. One was Heurelho Gomes, coming into his own as Milan roused themselves from the torpor of the first 45 minutes and laid siege to the Spurs goal at the start of the second half. Of his two fine saves from the head of Mario Yepes, Milan's imposing Colombian centre-back, a flying tip-around in the 50th minute exemplified the Brazilian's gifts as a shot?stopper.
The second solo act came from Peter Crouch, who can seldom have left the field with a warmer sense of personal satisfaction, at least against opponents of genuine quality. It was the mostly passive weapon of the striker's height that disquieted Milan in the first half, Christian Abbiati needing to fumble the ball away on several occasions before leaving the pitch with concussion. Crouch's success in ignoring Gattuso's constant provocation, a small miracle of self-restraint, received a rich reward 10 minutes from the end when he loped into position to profit from Lennon's superlative run and unselfish square pass. The coolly straightforward finish, like the rest of his performance, drew admiration even from those who are not regularly numbered among his admirers.
And all of this without Gareth Bale. Numerically large, Redknapp's squad can look thin on quality in comparison to those of their rivals at the top of the Premier League and in Europe. But on Tuesday at San Siro, on the very ground where Bale's hat-trick helped the side gather their wits and recover their self-respect last October, the veteran manager showed that he and his players have something to offer at the very highest level.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/feb/16/harry-redknapp-tottenham-milan
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