The Europa League Quarter-Finals: Spurs vs Eintracht Frankfurt Liveblog

Come one, come all! The circus is in town! Join me this evening to see what Jesuschristalmightyingham Hotspur can manage in their make-or-break Europa League match against Eintracht Frankfurt.

Good evening, cockerel-branded crash helmet wearers and rubber-neckers from other clubs alike. It’s time for the Europa League quarter-finals and that means only one thing (unless you happen to support Manchester United)… IT’S TOTTENHAM TIME!

I remain convinced that the most Spurs thing that Spurs could have done this season was to effectively proclaim that they were going all in on the cups during 2024/25—though this only really happened quite a while after League form collapsed to such an extent that European qualification through their final League position became throughly untenable—and then contriving to get knocked out of the two most straightforward options to actually achieve this in the space of four days during February, leaving only the most difficult one left to play for.

It should go without saying that the pressure has been growing on Ange Postecoglou for several months now, and even Spurs supporters who were prepared to give this experiment a chance are now rolling their eyes at him on a regular basis. There was a brief period of time during which even the losing could even feel… fun, albeit in a roundabout sort of way, so long as it wasn’t against Arsenal or Chelsea. At least they were entertaining, to the point of being reckless at times, and when they did win they won big, and that was definitely fun.

But this has largely evaporated over the course of 2025. The football is now brittle, skittish, and little more. Even last weekend it look a last minute penalty kick—which, such is the nature of Spurs at the moment, almost caused an argument on the pitch—to fluff up the margin of their win against one of the worst teams in the entire history of English top-flight football to an okay-looking from a distance two goals.

Postecoglou has looked increasingly grumpy over recent weeks, his once-cheery Antipodean, Bandit out of Bluey matiness reduced to spiky comments about the press, the fans, and just about anybody else who is questioning whatever on earth this ‘project’ is supposed to be. Better win and win well tonight, mate.

In truth, whether by accident or by design, the manager has back himself into an all-or-nothing corner. Either Spurs win the Europa League and qualify for next season’s Champions League or he leaves at the end of the season as their least successful manager since the club were relegated from the First Division in 1977.

Argue amongst yourselves about the relative importance and desirability of knockout cups, but there could be a case for saying that a season that winning a trophy this season would mark their best season since 2008, or perhaps 1991, or perhaps even 1984. It’s taking an ‘all or nothing’ approach to it’s natural logical conclusion. Absurdly so, some might argue.

Such polarisation, it might be argued, is the true ‘Tottenham Way’, though quite how losing at home to Ipswich Town and Leicester City, two of the teams that are going to get relegated from the Premier League come end of this season, fits the ancient (and increasingly inappropriate) motto of ‘the game being about glory’ is just about anybody’s guess, unless we’re talking about the glory of opposing teams arriving in North London and then departing again a couple of hours later with all three points.

And the opponents this evening are a bit of a daunting prospect. Eintracht Frankfurt are in third place in the Bundesliga at present behind Bayern Munich and Bayer Leverkusen and won this very competition as recently as 2022. There may be a crumb of comfort to be taken from the fact that their form has been far from stellar of late—they’ve lost four of their last six matches in the League themselves—but they’re far from the sort of shambles that the home team have seemed to be over the last few weeks.

(As a brief aside, “Eintracht” is the German word for “Harmony”, or, even more literally, “One Costume”, and I’m minded to change my porn star name from “Dick Towers” - my own maternal grandfather’s name, fact fans - to “Harmony Frankfurt” should things go either especially well or especially badly this evening. What’s your porn star name? Let me know in the comments - sorry, just trying some of that ‘influencer’ stuff on for size; doesn’t really fit me, does it?)

For those among you seeking some pre-match entertainment, I can offer you the weirdly optimistic preview that I wrote for Fotmob earlier this week, or a review of the last time that I was at The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, to see the women get humped by the Arsenal women in a way that was approximately 1% as sexy as your filthy imaginations might have imagined it to be from my description, there. For the more visually minded among you, how about Spurs vs Anderlecht in 1984? Ah, now those were the days.

Otherwise, let’s all agree to meet back here shortly before kick-off with some alcohol to numb the pain and a few zingers about Daniel Levy for some team news and a couple of shots of tequila, shall we? I’ll be back for about 7.30pm with some team news and the like. Please don’t make me go through this alone. Comments will be open to all. so we can have a nice communal chat together, so I’ll see you all back here later, yes? YES?

Good.

7.30pm: Teams! As I reported for Fotmob earlier this week, the big absentee for Eintracht Frankfurt is experienced goalkeeper Kevin Trapp. He’s replaced by Kauã Santos, and it was a bit of a close thing over him too. He had to miss their 2-0 loss at Werder Bremen last Saturday, an injury which left them needing their third choice goalkeeper Jens Grahl. He returns to the bench for this evening.

Spurs are, of course, missing Dejan Kulusevski, Radu Dragusin and Kevin Danso. Kulusevski and Danso could be back for the second leg, but even that looks as though it will be touch and go at the moment. Here’s what happened the last time these two met back in 2022 in the Champions League, all of which feels a little like the BEFORE TIMES.

(I will endeavour to keep you updated with whatever on earth is going on with Manchester United this evening; Chelsea are 3-0 up away to Legia Warsaw in the Conference League, so they seem likely to continue their leisurely stroll towards that trophy.)

Spurs: Vicario, Porro, Romero, Van de Ven, Udogie, Bergvall, Bentancur, Maddison, Johnson, Solanke, Son.

Subs: Austin, Whiteman, Bissouma, Richarlison, Tel, Gray, Spence, Odobert, Sarr, Davies, Moore.

Eintracht Frankfurt: Santos, Kristensen, Koch, Theate, Brown, Skhiri, Tuta, Gotze, Larsson, Bahoya, Ekitike.

Subs: Grahl, Siljevic, Amenda, Chaibi, Wahi, Dahoud, Uzun, Chandler, Nkounkou, Batshuayi, Collins, Fenyo.

7.45pm: The teams are out on the pitch running through their warm-ups. The Chelsea match finished 3-0, so they’re effectively through to the semi-finals with a second leg to spare, which may come in useful for their match the weekend after that. The second legs of these games, by the way, is next week, so at least we don’t have to put up with the interminable waiting for the inevitable that we did with the EFL Cup semi-finals.

7.57pm: Here come the teams. Spurs in all-white (apart from those cursed navy blue sleeves), Eintracht Frankfurt in orange and black. Parp parp-parp parrrrrrrrp, rings out the sole trumpet, before giving way to what I presume to be the Europa League ‘anthem’. As I mentioned in my write-up of the women’s NLD last year, Spurs “should, of course, use the Louis Armstrong version [of When The Saints/Spurs Go Marching In]; no other club could more appropriately take to the pitch sounding like a New Orleans funeral”.

The Frankfurt supporters have been running through a bit of a pre-match Poznan. One of their supporters is excitedly waving a megaphone; how on earth did he sneak that in past security? I had can of deoderant confiscated from me at the turnstiles at Billericay Town earlier this season (though to be fair, I was able to get it back after the match).

Meanwhile pitchside, Glenn Hoddle thinks that, “It’s one of those nights when the team and the crowd have to work together”. To be fair, Spurs might have a better chance if they had 55,000-odd players on the pitch, though UEFA might have a thing or two to say about that. The Hod has also got a “good vibe about tonight”, which is the sort of bold statement that absolutely fills me with fear.

8.00pm: And we’re off! (I’ll switch to the number of minutes played from now on now. That’ll be easier for everyone, won’t it?) Spurs are shooting from right to left in the first half. I feel as though I should add, for those who haven’t visited it, that The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is a lovely stadium, probably the best of the new-builds that I’ve seen in recent years. (And I’m trying to say that without bias; this is a pretty widely-held opinion, I think.)

As per one Bluesky user who messaged me about this earlier, I’m a little uneasy about Djed Spence being dropped to the bench for this match. Yes yes, I know about game time and everything, but Spence has been one of the few really bright spots of this season. I thought he was a bargain at £20m when he arrived from Forest a couple of years ago and remain convinced that there’s a brilliant player in there.

5’: GOAL: Spurs 0-1 Eintracht Frankfurt

Spurs THAT. Funnily enough, they’d been keeping hold of possession reasonably well over that first five minutes, but Hugo Ekitike gets the ball out on the left, the Spurs defence folds like tissue paper, and he rifles it diagonally into the corner of the goal past Vicario. It’s his 20th of the season in all competitions, and it’s a peak moment of Tottenhamness. It probably couldn’t have been much easier for him.

10’: A long ball from Porro finds Son on the left, but his cross looking for Dominic Solanke is plucked out of the air by Santos. If he puts in a decent performance, I’ll be calling him ‘O Santastico’ by about the 55 minute mark.

15’: Solanke has a header which counts technically as a ‘shot on target’, but honestly, I could have quite comfortably saved it so I’m not sure we can really count it. Honestly, it’s all pretty familiar, this. Spurs look okay in possession, but the defence was far too easily torn asunder on the break and that was that. Daniel Levy, a shrivelled chipolata of a man, looks unhappy up there in the stand.

18’: Chance for Spurs! A cross to the far post is looking for Brennan Johnson but he’s distracted by there being a defender being there and his header goes over from close range. They’re starting to get into some sort of rhythm. Just a pity they had to arse things up and hand their opponents the lead first.

22’: The Eintracht Frankfurt head coach Dino Toppmöller—who was named after the 1982 Italy World Cup winning goalkeeper and captain Dino Zoff, fact fans—is wearing a roll-neck arran sweater which looks like the sort of thing that Cap’n Haddock out of Tintin would wear. Dominic Solanke goes down under a challenge inside the Frankfurt penalty area, but can’t even manage a hurt facial expression, so unlikely was that to ever be given as a penalty kick.

25’: GOAL FOR SPURS! Spurs 1-1 Eintracht Frankfurt!

That’s a lovely goal from Pedro Porro! James Maddison gets the ball on the left and pulls it back for Porro, who flicks the ball first time with his heel and they’re all back on level terms; it’s one of those goals that looks better with each repeat viewing, a lovely touch. And honestly, they do deserve that. They’d reacted pretty well to conceding such an early goal and had been building up the pressure since then.

By the way, Manchester United have fallen a goal behind to Lyon, just in case you wanted to direct your schadenfreude elsewhere. The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium sounds like an absolute bearpit tonight, by the way.

33’: This has not been an especially impressive performance from Eintracht Frankfurt so far, by the way. They’ve looked quite easy to move through, and while it would be a stretch to say that the equalising goal was coming, you could see how their defence could be penetrated. The Johnson chance was a warning, and Spurs have been doing a most of their damage down the left.

35’: Frankfurt push the ball towards the Spurs penalty area after a bit of a clumsy pass from Son. They get possession back, but Ekitike is an obvious threat and Ange Postecoglou is straight off the bench to tell everyone to calm down a little bit, which is fair enough, since it doesn’t really feel as though this match has had that calm phase that professional matches often seem to have once the early excitement has worn off a little.

40’: This season’s official Europa League ball is made by a company called Kipsta, of whose work I had been previously been unaware. The arrowy design makes it look like a Mitre at first glance, so I guess that’s a good bit of free—and presumably unintentional—advertising for them.

45’: Weirdly, the first half’s first real period of lull has come in the last five minutes, as though the two teams have run out of puff as a result of their exertions. With the very last kick of the half, though, the Spurs defence is cut open and Ekitike is completely on his own on the edge of the Spurs penalty area, but he mis-hits his shot and Vicario saves comfortably. That looked like a bit of a let-off, to me. Anyway, there’s no stoppage-time and the referee’s whistle blows immediately, so at half-time it’s 1-1. Spurs haven’t been as bad as I thought they’d be and Frankfurt haven’t been as good as I thought they’d be.

I’m off to smoke some crack and down as many cans as I can manage. Back for the second half in fifteen-ish minutes!

Half-Time: Spurs 1-1 Eintracht Frankfurt

ANNNND WE’RE BACK!

47’: Manchester United equalised in Lyon five minutes into stoppage-time at the end of their first half, by the way, so that one was 1-1 at half-time too. For those who are interested, I managed to down one can during the interval and was then a minute or two late back for the start of the second half. It’s just like being there, really.

50’: No changes at half-time, by the way. Bahoya dances through the Totenham defence on the right hand side of their penalty area and is completely through but tries to pull the ball back when, had he shot, he’d likely have scored, and all this allows Romero to shepherd the ball out for a goal kick. Bit of a brainmelt moment for him, and a bit of a let-off for Spurs. Frankfurt have started the second half quite brightly, a reminder of how brittle the Spurs defence can be.

55’: Bergvall hits the bar for Spurs! An outstanding angled shot from the right hand side of the penalty area which was very close to putting them in front! Thirty seconds later, Son’s shot from the edge of the penalty area is brilliantly turned away by Santos! From the resulting corner, Bentancur’s header hits the crossbar and bounces over! Three excellent chances in no more than a minute or two!

58’: Johnson passes inside to Maddison, who cuts inside and has his shot blocked by Santos’ legs!

Spurs are knocking on the door of a second goal here, and it makes you wonder about the extent to which they might end up regretting not having taken these chances.

60’: Kristensen finds himself a little space on the right for Frankfurt and crosses across the six yard area, but there’s no-one available to get on the end of it and the moment passes. First yellow card of the night, and it’s for Bahoya, whose clumsy tackle on Son not only wins a free kick for Spurs but also ends what might have been a promising break for Frankfurt. Gotze pulls the ball back for Bahoya, who scoops the ball over the crossbar. It’s been quite a frantic start to the second half.

66’: Things have slowed down a tiny, weeny bit, which is good news for the live bloggers of the world. I haven’t really had the time to check yet, but there’s a reasonable chance that I wouldn’t be able to provide a fingerprint at the moment.

Meanwhile, Udogie gets to the byline and tries to pull the ball back, but the ball is put behind by a defender. The corner, as they used to say in Championship Manager 97/98, comes to nothing.

69’: First substitution of the evening, and it’s Bahoya who’s bahoyked off, to be replaced by Fares Chaibi. Nice. Yellow card for Kristensen, for a foul on Udogie. Maddison’s fee-kick is headed away for a corner.

71’: From the corner, Bentancur’s header is comfortably saved. It’s Spurs’ 8th goal attempt of the evening. Still 1-1 in Lyon, by the way.

78’: A triple substitution for Spurs. Djed Spence, Matthijs Tel and Pape Sarr are all coming on, while Son Heung Min, Destiny Udogie and James Maddison are the players to be replaced.

80’: James Maddison has got a look on his face like a slapped arse as a result of having been subbed.

82’: Spence is straight into it, finding himself some room and left and pulling the ball back to the edge of the penalty area, but Brennan Johnson balloons his shot well over the crossbar.

85’: Matthijs Tel picks up a yellow card for having go at the referee after the officials don’t see a cross deflecting off the top of a defender’s head for what would have been a corner.

87’: It does feel rather as though Eintracht Frankfurt would be happy with a draw from this match, as well they might. They haven’t seemed especially ambitious since about the hour mark.

89’: Substitutions for both teams. Solanke is replaced by Richarlison for Spurs, while for Frankfurt, Elye Wahi on for Ekitike, who has put in a shift and been as impressive as I’d expected him to be. Bit of a surprising change, the latter of those, since he really had been their best player, certainly in attacking positions.

90’: There will be three minutes of stoppage-time. There’s also a late double change for Frankfurt. Goetze is replaced by Can Uzun, and Niels Nkounkou comes on for Nathaniel Brown.

90’+2’: One last thrown of the dice for Spurs, and another superb save from Santos! A free-kick from the left is headed back across the goal, and Mickey Van de Ven’s header isb down into the ground and bounces up to be tippedover by the goalkeeper!

Elsewhere, a late Joshua Zirkzee goal has given Manchester United a 2-1 lead in Lyon, but it feels as though all the drama next week will be in Germany.

Oh wait, Lyon have equalised five minutes into stoppage-time against United. Never stop Manchester Uniteding, Manchester United.

Full-time: Spurs 1-1 Eintracht Frankfurt

Frankfurt will be happier with the result, but Spurs will be happier with their performance tonight. They created some decent chances in the second half and forced a string of excellent saves from the stand-in goalkeeper Santos. A decent performance from Spurs, but not enough to get the edge ahead of that all-important second leg. If you think tonight was nervy, just wait until this time next Thursday night. Shall we reconvene for it? We should, probably, shouldn’t we? Thanks for stopping by if you did, it’s been a frantic and entertaining evening. 3,420 words on, it’s time for me to got for a lie down. It’s been emotional!