I've always felt really impressed by Europa winners. I know the CL is the big deal, and has the best teams. But slogging through the Europa against all the good teams that fell short of the CL for one reason or another, plus, now, the ones that crashed out early, seems like it would be a great accomplishment.
Nobody ever thinks badly of a winner do they.... look at Shaktar, Porto, Sevilla or Athletico. They are alot more prestigious imo than Spurs as they have a trophy to their names. We have London and PL money which is a big bonus, but are third in recent history to Goons and Chelsea. I think us winning this year and finishing ahead of Arsenal would be a significant shift in dynamics. Heres hoping.
The season's long, and who knows whether we'll reach our goals. I was just thinking, though, that what Spurs have achieved recently is very impressive compared to the recent past. Knocking Inter out of Europe two seasons out of three. Beating AC Milan. Beating Lyon. Finishing fourth two seasons out of three. Finishing above Chelsea last year. Becoming a real media lightning rod and source of excitment, suspense and (sometimes!) brilliant play in the football world. I've tended to focus on the painful ways we've come up short. But thinking about all we've accomplished makes me feel better. And what started the ball rolling was Martin Jol, from what little I know. Who I'm hoping won't knock us off track Sunday.
That's right Jol was the first Manager in years to give us hope that we were really headed in the right direction. Then came Ramos!
Ramos was not so bad. Won a trophy and had us playing some really positive football at times. And his tenure lead to Harry....and the rest as they say..........was Triffic!!
I think it's easy to just think of the 2pts 8games, but he got us playing really well against teams we generally looked even more ****e against than normal ie top 4. I remember a couple of games vs utd where we really gave it a good go. It's hard to judge him overall as he went from us to Real madrid, and won 2 Uefa cups, but has done nothing of note really since. Santini had 11 players in our own half!!!
This squad has been N yrs in the making. All involved over the past decade should be commended for getting Spurs to the point of consolidating around the PL top 4, where even loss of creative personnel (Modric, VDV) , and change of manager, does not seem to affect the performance of the squad as a whole.
Don't know about anyone else but the Euorpa league seems more exciting than the C/L,from what i've seen in the last 2 seasons
Europa League winners since 2000: Galastaray, Liverpool, Feyenoord, Porto, Valencia, CSKA, Sevilla, Sevilla, Zenit, Shaktar, Athletico Madrid, Porto, Athletico Madrid (10 teams) Champions League Winners since 2000: Real Madrid, Bayern, Real Madrid, AC Milan, Porto, Liverpool, Barcelona, AC Milan, Barcelona, Inter, Barcelona, Chelsea (8 teams) Was looking for a more obvious calibration, but I'm sure if you got the teams participating in the Semi-Finals stat up, it would show the Europa is a more random statistic, with nearly every team in it from a decent league in with a shot, whereas the Champions League is pretty stagnant, as in 90% of the time, semi finals have Bayern, Barca, Real, United or AC until a few years ago, with outside teams rarely getting a shot.
