With their flaky, 'Spursy' reputation a thing of the past, Tottenham are now becoming the club that just will not die in Europe.
Time and again this season, they have looked finished in the Champions League .
Last summer, after a transfer window in which they failed to sign a single player, manager Mauricio Pochettino and his squad were ridiculed when suggesting they could make an impact in the competition.
After defeats to Inter Milan and Barcelona and a draw with PSV Eindhoven in the first three group games, the idea that Tottenham could qualify for the knockout phase was being laughed out of London. Yet they did — scoring an 85th minute equaliser in the Nou Camp to draw their last match.
Then, in the last 16, some wrote them off as they had to face Bundesliga leaders Borussia Dortmund without injured talisman Harry Kane. A Kane-less side thumped Dortmund 3-0 at Wembley though, and the England star returned to kill the tie with the only goal in Germany.
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Quadruple-chasing Manchester City, beaten 1-0 in London as Hugo Lloris saved a Sergio Aguero penalty and Kane suffered another injury he has yet to return from, scored three times in the second leg's first 21 minutes to again leave Spurs looking doomed. But Tottenham netted three of their own and, astonishingly, went through on away goals as a stoppage-time City winner was disallowed after a VAR assessment.
At 3-0 down on aggregate in the Johan Cruyff Arena after 54 minutes of Wednesday's semi-final second leg, with Ajax flying and the visitors seemingly set to suffer a sixth defeat in their last seven games, talk that lightning could strike twice after Liverpool’s comeback from the same deficit against Barcelona 24 hours earlier appeared to be fanciful at best.
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Spurs are now planning for the final in Madrid on June 1 and the possibility that, against all the odds, they could end a quite remarkable campaign as football's kings of Europe.
As the magnitude of their unlikely win over one of his old clubs sank in, defender Toby Alderweireld said: “It’s incredible. This season in this competition we were already dead a couple of times, and we came back.
"The group stages. Manchester City away as well. I think we deserve to be in the final.
"If you play Dortmund, in that moment the top team in the league in Germany; City, top in England; Ajax, top in Holland; then I think you deserve to be in the final.
“Mentally, physically, we were stronger against Ajax. They have enormous quality, they know how to play.
"But it wasn’t only fight — we play good football as well.”
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Team-mate Danny Rose, the subject of transfer speculation, added: “We realise we’ve a chance to make history.
“If you go back to the Barcelona game, everyone wrote us off. Everyone wrote us off against City. Everyone wrote us off last week after the Ajax game and now we find ourselves in the final.
“So we have to keep going, keep believing and keep playing well. We’ll have a few players back from injury, which will be a huge bonus. We have to see where it takes us.”
Rose revealed that despite the first-half goals from Matthijs de Ligt and Hakim Ziyech which appeared to leave Spurs with an impossible task by half-time on Wednesday, Pochettino remained calm and made his players a secret promise.
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Rose said: “Before the game, he told us to show the attitude that Liverpool showed.
“We watched it [the Reds' remarkable 4-0 win over Barca] in the hotel — and he’s made us a promise, which I won’t say until after the final, but he wants us to go and win.
“At half-time, he was very calm.
“After the game, the manager never says anything. He was very emotional and he’s very proud of us and I’m sure when we get back he will address everything and say how well we’ve done.”
