Real Madrid beats Tottenham Hotspur, 1-0, securing a UEFA Champions League semi-final spot against Barcelona
Real Madrid ended a successful venture, on Wednesday night, 13th April, at White Hart Lane, London, of making it through another knock-out round of the UCL (UEFA Champions League). Jose Mourinho’s men crushed Tottenham Hotspur by 1-0 in the second
leg of the quarter-final of the UCL to make it through to the semi-finals of Europe’s biggest competition. Portuguese international, Cristiano Ronaldo, was in the limelight by striking the only goal of the match in the 50th minute, perverting Spurs’
impressive home record in Europe to four losses.
After thrashing Spurs by 4-0 in the first leg of the quarter-final tie at
Santiago Bernabeu last week, Madrid denied Spurs a miraculous comeback in the second leg of the tie with a 5-0 aggregate score, ending their UCL debut campaign by defeating them at their home ground.
The Los Blancos will now clash with their domestic arch rival, Barcelona, in the UCL’s two legged semi-final tie next month, which shall be the biggest blockbuster of the European competition this season.
The Spurs’ shot-stopper, Heurelho Gomes, made the biggest blunder of the match early in the second half, failing to stop an easy long range shot from Ronaldo by letting the ball slip from his shaky hands. This moment will probably haunt him for a considerable
period of time since that sole goal ended Spurs’ unbeaten European home record this season. Ronaldo, with a perfect assist from his teammate, Sami Khedira, launched an unexpected long range shot that ended Spurs’ unbeaten record of 17 games at White Hart Lane
in the European competition this season.
The match went through numerous highs and lows. Tottenham started the match brilliantly, keeping Madrid on their toes and giving an impression of possibly scoring the four goals they needed. Spurs came very close to the goal on two occasions but were unsuccessful.
The first misfortune that took place for Spurs was in the 38th minute when Gareth Bale’s goal was disallowed by the referee since his teammate, Modric, headed the ball to him from an offside position. Harry Redknapp’s men made three close penalty
claims early in the match, but the referee denied them of a spot-kick on each occasion.
The La Liga giants, Real Madrid, made exceptional efforts to keep Spurs away from their goal. In this effort, two Madrid players, Ricardo Carvalho and Esteban Granero Molina, were booked with yellow cards in the 39th and 79th minutes
respectively. Carvalho would be missing the first leg of the semi-final against Barcelona due to his yellow card.
Jose Mourinho went into the match with his strongest team despite five of his key players only a card away from suspension. On the other hand, Gareth Bale exhibited a world-class performance for Spurs but the absence of their key striker, Peter Crouch, affected
their goal scoring big time since most of their goals come from Crouch’s head following a good cross in the box.
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