Tottenham Hotspur’s first Champions League game in five years ended in defeat.
Quoted by Goal.com, Tottenham boss Mauricio Pochettino has cited a “lack of passion” as a leading factor behind his side’s Champions League defeat by Monaco.
Spurs’ first Champions League game in over five years ended in a 2-1 defeat at Wembley, with Bernardo Silva and Thomas Lemar netting first-half goals.
Toby Alderweireld halved the deficit just before the break, but the Ligue 1 leaders held firm throughout the second half to frustrate Tottenham.
The clash was played at Wembley due to White Hart Lane being redeveloped and, despite boasting attendance figures of 85,000 – a record for an English home club in this competition – the Lilywhites did not look as comfortable as they perhaps would have been on their own patch.
Pochettino’s side mustered very few goalscoring chances in the second half, with Harry Kane missing a notable chance, and the Argentine has put the defeat down to a shortage of passion from his troops.
“We need to be more aggressive in possession, when we have the possibility to score, we need to be more, more aggressive,” he told a press conference, via Goal.com.
“We need to show more hunger, we need to show more passion. I think we showed a lack of passion today.”
It’s something of a worry for Tottenham if they cannot muster the passion for such a big occasion, it being their first Champions League match in half-a-decade and all.
Granted, it did not come at White Hart Lane, but at least three of their games in this competition will come away from home anyway, and failing to summon some enthusiasm for those outings will almost certainly result in a short-lived return to the tournament they had been trying to qualify for since 2011.
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