Current Spurs: Lloris, Vertonghen, Dembele, Chadli, Bentaleb, Paulinho, BAE Former Spurs: Modric, Corluka, Pletikosa, GDS, Luongo, Palacios, Postiga, Ziegler, Dempsey, Zokora (Kranjcar and VDV were in their respective squads, but missed out due to injury)
Strange no one other than Belgium realized that nothing would affect their World Cup chances other than how Spurrish the team was...except France, who made a Spur their captain and imitate Spurs' appearance slavishly. Credit that Algerian manager though. Only had one Spur to choose from, and has yet to play a minute without him. Why would we prefer a 20 year old we already have who's a fixture on a team that made it to the KO stages when we could pay 30 million for a 25 year old not good enough to start for a team that's not good enough to win a game in the round robin phase?
Poor old Chile and Colombia. They could play a belter today, but with no token Spurs player, they are doomed.
And so it came to pass. Note to big Phil (and other WC managers) : If you don't want repeated 120 mins of anguish like that, you have to PLAY the tokens in the starting XI.
The odd streak does keep going, slightly tweaked. "Active" Spurs on the field when their teams advanced to the next round: 6: Lloris 2x, Vertonghen 2X, Chadli, Bentaleb. "Active" Spurs on the field when their teams were eliminated: 0 (the "active" is meant to eliminate anyone who didn't play for Spurs last year, i.e., Beni)
