Dele Alli scored a ‘world-class’ goal during Tottenham Hotspur’s 4-0 thrashing of Wolfsberger AC on Wednesday afternoon, visiting coach Ferdinand Feldhofer told EuroCalciomercato.
On a night full of positives for Jose Mourinho’s men, the performance of a certain seldom-seen Englishman was the biggest plus point of all.
Less than 24 hours after Olivier Giroud contorted his 34-year-old limbs into the most picture-perfect of overhead kicks, Alli did something very similar during Spurs’ Europa League round-of-32 second leg tie.
The England international controlled a Matt Docherty cross before looping a sublime flick over his own head and into the Wolfsberger net with just ten minutes on the clock.
For Feldhofer, this was just one of those moments where all you can do is sit back and applaud. That does not mean, however, that his Wolfsberger defenders were free from any blame after giving Alli the time and space to execute one of the finest goals of his career.
“Congratulations to Tottenham on this well-deserved victory. They were very confident and strong; big compliments to the quality of Tottenham,” Feldhofer said.
“Of course, it is a bit disappointing because in reality you get the feeling, like today, that you are not that far away (from matching them). But then you see the individual quality of Tottenham players who, when they have a few inches of space, do great things in front of the goal.
“On the first one, we didn’t defend enough – a world-class goal.”
Not only did Alli open the scoring in North London with a moment of pure magic, he also set up goals two and three as Spurs cruised to an 8-1 aggregate win.
It was his glorious cross that made Carlos Vinicius’s back-post header a formality, before rolling the ball into Gareth Bale’s path as the Welshman rattled home the most emphatic of first-time finishes.
There was even time for Nile John, Marcel Lavinier and Dane Scarlett to get a few first-team minutes under their belts; the latter equalling Kylian Mbappe’s European record to assist Vinicius’s second late on.
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