LONDON, Sept 14 Monaco stunned Tottenham Hotspur with a 2-1 victory at Wembley Stadium in their Champions League Group E opener on Wednesday in front of a record attendance for an English team at home in the competition.
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However, a mistake by Erik Lamela, who gave the ball away in a risky area, allowed Monaco’s Bernardo Silva to curl a superb shot into the corner of the Spurs net, making it 1-0 to the visitors in the 16th minute.
The iconic Wembley arch was lit up in Tottenham’s blue and white, but that was the extent of the home comforts for Mauricio Pochettino’s side as they paid the price for a sloppy first-half display.
Speaking after the game, Pochettino said: “I think that we all agree that we started well but then we conceded after 15 minutes”.
The response from the hosts was positive to going a goal down but they were finding it very hard to break down a very confident team who were showing why they had made a good start to the season.
“When you concede like this it is very hard”.
“We were better than Monaco, but to win we need to show more and be more aggressive because we can not concede the goals we conceded”.
The Spurs boss, who had never lost a European game at home with Tottenham before Wednesday, described his side as having a “lack of passion”.
Pochettino sent on Mousa Dembele for Son after half-time and Spurs went close to levelling the match when Dele Alli unleashed a dipping 25-yard drive that Subasic did well to tip over the crossbar.
We started poorly and they punished us for it.
“It is not new. We need to pick ourselves up and win the next game”. Without further comment, read on for Tottenham’s individual player ratings for the match. Harry Kane was denied at point blank range by Danijel Subašić as a capacity crowd at the home of football were left frustrated in the club’s first top flight continental game for five years.
“We needed to be more aggressive, more hungry and have more passion”. Monaco are a good team but we weren’t ruthless enough.
The Frenchman came off the bench to play in the final 10 minutes of Spurs’ Champions League group stage defeat to Monaco at Wembley Stadium.
“We improved in the second half and had chances to win”.
“I was sad at half-time but I said to the players if you had said we were going to be winning 2-1 at half-time I would have taken that”. The stadium was packed full of white shirts and, as the famous music rang around the national stadium, there was a real sense of occasion.
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In front of over 85,000 at Wembley, Tottenham began brightly and had much the better of the play.
