These are strange times for Tottenham. Historically they have often been a side whose performances did not match their results, but tradition has it they would be pretty and ineffective. Under Thomas Frank they have become the opposite.
Midway through the second half Spurs were 2-0 down and apparently on their way to a convincing defeat. They rode their luck as Andreas Helmersen hit the bar with an effort that would have made it 3-1, but they had the character to battle back and secure a 2-2 draw.
Doggedness and resilience have not been stereotypical Spurs qualities. Bodø/Glimt’s fans seemed happy enough at the end, serenading their players – and perhaps there was a sense of Tottenham’s greater quality telling – but this was a game they could have won with ease.
“We showed big character to fight back,” Frank said. “It’s hugely important that they have that to keep running, keep fighting, to do the right thing. We kept moving the ball, kept creating chances from wide. Until 2-0 they were the better team but after that we got on top.”
It was the third time in four games that Spurs have conceded the opening goal of the game, but Frank believes that is coincidence. Only in this match did he accept that Tottenham had “struggled” early on, insisting that against both Brighton and Wolves, Spurs had conceded against the run of play. That was emphatically not the case here. “On the ball I felt we could and should have kept the ball better,” Frank said, something he blamed on a lack of both structure and willingness to be bold. “A little bit on the day where you just need better touches, better decisions, better passes.”
Perhaps missing the leadership of Cristian Romero, left in London as a precaution, Tottenham never imposed themselves physically as they had in beating Bodø/Glimt in the Europa League semi-final in May. Here the home side had their chances before a late challenge from Rodrigo Bentancur on Fredrik André Bjørkan conceded a 32nd-minute penalty.
Presented with a historic chance, though, Kasper Høgh smashed his shot so high over the bar that it cleared the seating behind the goal and might even have cleared the tiled roofs of the houses across the street had there not been a net strung between the flagpoles at the top of the stand.
It was Bodø/Glimt’s first home game in the group phase of the Champions League, and they were determined to make the most of it. The pre-match singing of the club anthem was heartfelt and gently moving, and followed by the rhythmic detonation of a series of fireworks, startlingly loud in the still Arctic night. European football has little place these days for romance but Glimt remain an example of what can be achieved by enlightened leadership even in a remote town of just over 50,000 population.
They may have won four of the past five Norwegian championships, and be handily placed as this season’s title race enters the run-in, but this is not a club that has become sated by silverware. In the 1980s, as they slid into the third flight, Glimt were not even the biggest team in Bodø, that honour belonging to Grand.
Back then their main claim to fame was the forward slash in their name, introduced to avoid the confusion their hyphen caused on betting coupons. The hyphen itself was a product of Glimt adding Bodø to their name in 1948 so they would not be mixed up with a similarly named club from Trøndelag.
All around town, among the clapboard houses and along the dockside, yellow Glimt flags could be seen, while the mood was simultaneously welcoming and disbelieving. This is still a club for whom playing in the Champions League is a privilege.
The honour of scoring their first home goal in the group phase went to a homegrown talent in Jens Petter Hauge, albeit he has had spells away at Milan and Eintracht Frankfurt, where he became the first Norwegian to win the Europa League. Drifting in from the left, he was a persistent menace, both goals highlighting his balance and technical quality.
Nikita Haikin, the Glimt goalkeeper, had pointed out how “unusual” it was that Spurs focus so much on set plays and for a long time that did appear their only threat. Bentancur seemed to have levelled two minutes after the Glimt opener, as the ball was returned to the centre after a Pedro Porro free-kick had hit the post; it was ruled out after a VAR review for a pull by Micky van de Ven.
Spurs did score two minutes after Glimt’s second, Van de Ven heading in another Porro free-kick. Wilson Odobert headed a Mohammed Kudus delivery against the crossbar but the equaliser did arrive in the 89th minute as Archie Gray’s shot ricocheted in off Jostein Gundersen, the fourth own goal from which Spurs have benefited this season.
Deserved? Perhaps not, but when has that ever mattered?
