Europa League LIVE updates: Ange’s Spurs take on Norwegian minnows in semi-final first leg

Second corner coming up now, this one was won by Brennan Johnson. Pedro Porro will take this one.

He finds Richarlison, but his header is miscued… it falls to Bissouma on the edge of the box, but his shot cannons into one of a sea of bodies in Spurs’ attacking box… and now the game will be paused because the ball hit the referee. So it’s a drop ball, and Bodo/Glimt get it back – and get off the hook.

Tottenham Hotspur 1-0 Bodo/Glimt, 15 minutes

First corner of the match here for Spurs after a nice break by Richarlison and Destiny Udogie. Looks like it’ll be Maddison to take it. It finds a head… but no shots on target, just a bit of pinball and then it goes over the line. Goal kick for the visitors, who are definitely on the back foot, although not quite rattled, I wouldn’t say… although they just turned the ball over as I wrote that as they tried to play out from that goal kick. So maybe they are.

Tottenham Hotspur 1-0 Bodo/Glimt, 10 minutes

Another opportunity just now for Spurs, a little more speculative though. It fell for James Maddison after a long ball from the back from Cristian Romero, which put him through on goal – it was a tough one to handle though and he put it wide of the mark.

But what a bright, positive start for Tottenham. For a change!

Tottenham Hotspur 1-0 Bodo/Glimt, 6 minutes

WOW – what a start by Tottenham Hotspur!

They’re up inside the first minute, off the first attack of the game!

It’s Brennan Johnson who scores it after an excellent cross from the right by Pedro Porro. Richarlison heads it across goal and Johnson pops up at the back post to put it away.

Huge. That took just 40 seconds, and it delivered immediate vindication for Postecoglou for those wide selections.

Tottenham Hotspur 1-0 Bodo/Glimt, 1 minutes

The teams are walking out, the crowd looks and sounds electric – we’ll have some football to talk about very soon. Watch it on Stan Sport, by the way, if you have it!

The possibility of a manager leaving Tottenham Hotspur after winning the Europa League should sound familiar to fans of a certain age, who will remember the remark attributed to Keith Burkinshaw on exiting the club.

Legend has it that Burkinshaw said “there used to be a football club over there” after leaving Spurs for the final time, following the club’s last success in Europe.

Tottenham won the 1984 UEFA Cup – now the Europa League – under Burkinshaw but it proved to be his last game in charge as the Barnsley-born manager left the club over a disagreement with the board. It has since been claimed that Burkinshaw nodded in agreement at the repetition of the Frank Sinatra song title There Used To Be A Ballpark in relation to Spurs, but the sentiment remains the same whichever version of the story fans prefer to believe.

Ahead of the first leg of Tottenham’s Europa League semi-final against Bodo/Glimt, it is not unreasonable to wonder whether history could be about to repeat itself. For those of a superstitious nature, it should be added that Liverpool won the league in the same season Tottenham last lifted a European trophy and after which Burkinshaw left.

“I used to be [superstitious], but not any more,” said Ange Postecoglou. “I never used to change my socks, but then I thought: ‘Jeez, if it’s just the socks then what am I doing? What is the point of me being a coach if it’s just the socks that make the difference?’”

Telegraph Sport first reported that Postecoglou has been heading towards the Tottenham exit whether or not the club end their 17-year trophy drought by winning a European competition for the first time since Burkinshaw’s success 41 years ago.

Postecoglou is expected to be sacked if Spurs fail to get past Bodo/Glimt or lose in the final and the Australian may even be dismissed if his team do lift the trophy in Bilbao and qualify for next season’s Champions League, given the disastrous Premier League campaign.

There is also the scenario of Postecoglou choosing to go with his head held high if Tottenham win the Europa League and settle on a mutual split with the club, which has not yet been dismissed by sources who have worked with the 59-year-old.

Postecoglou has proved before – just like Burkinshaw did – that he is prepared to walk away, no matter how big the moment, if things are not right behind the scenes or he believes his vision is no longer shared.

It was just two weeks after Australia qualified for the World Cup in 2018 that Postecoglou announced his resignation as coach. Explaining his decision, he said: “I walked away from a World Cup and the reason I walked away was I just didn’t enjoy what I was doing.

“I’ve said all along, it’s not just winning games of football. It’s got to be a higher purpose and my higher purpose in Australia was to change the game. I just don’t think that will happen.”

Postecoglou’s higher purpose at Tottenham has been to try to change a football club, but, under owners Enic and chairman Daniel Levy, that appears to be an impossible task.

How did an unheralded Norwegian team from a tiny town north of the Arctic Circle become one of the fairy-tale stories of European soccer?

For Bodø/Glimt, the transformation has been underpinned by a fighter pilot who developed mental techniques for his squadron before bombing missions in Libya.

Bjørn Mannsverk discovered a group of players exuding negative energy and prone to “a collective mental breakdown” when he was asked in early 2017 to join the backroom staff of a team that had just been relegated to Norway’s second tier.

His task as “mental coach” at Bodø/Glimt? To make players talk openly about their feelings, lower stress levels, change their attitudes and routines about things like preparation and nutrition, and remove the stigma around mental training.

Winning or losing no longer mattered. It was all about following a philosophy and culture established by Mannsverk, a former Royal Norwegian air force squadron leader whose military duties took him to Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks and to Libya for a NATO-led intervention in 2011.

The results have been extraordinary.

After securing an immediate return to Norway’s top division, the team — based more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) north of Oslo in a fishing town, Bodø, with a population of around 55,000 — has captured four of the country’s last five league titles. It started in 2020 with a first in the history of a club founded in 1916.

Bodø/Glimt has also had some big results in Europe in recent seasons — a 6-1 thrashing of Jose Mourinho’s Roma in the Conference League 2021 stands out — and this year it has become the first Norwegian club to reach the semifinals of a major European competition.

The first leg against Tottenham in the Europa League takes place in London on Thursday. It’s Bodø/Glimt’s biggest ever match.

“It is a fairy tale, almost a miracle,” Mannsverk told The Associated Press in a video interview. “How can you actually come from (Norway’s) second division in 2017 to playing a Champions League playoff and teams like Arsenal five years later?

“But I think it’s possible … if you have the right mentality and you work hard over time.”

Tottenham Hotspur have an opportunity to salvage a disappointing domestic season by reaching a European final, but they will not be taking their home clash with Norwegian side Bodo/Glimt lightly, manager Ange Postecoglou said.

Bodo’s four league titles in five years under manager Kjetil Knutsen, who has been in charge since 2018, has led to them competing consistently in Europe, and they are the first Norwegian club to reach a European club semi-final.

“They have been pretty consistent the last few years, the same manager and a core group of players,” Postecoglou told reporters ahead of Thursday’s Europa League semi-final first leg.

“They definitely have a distinct style of football that they have stuck to and have had success with. They have been pretty consistent in the Norwegian league but also in Europe.

“Every game they have played, irrespective of the opposition, and they have played some really good quality opposition in Europe, they have always been really competitive.”

Postecoglou is well aware of Bodo’s ability to rise to the occasion, having lost to the Norwegians in the Europa Conference League while manager of Celtic.

“The atmosphere at Celtic Park is unbelievable, but they weren’t fazed,” the manager said.

“They won’t be daunted by anything that comes tomorrow. They’ve been at Old Trafford, they’ve played some big clubs in Italy and other countries.

“Bodo are there on merit. They beat Lazio, Olympiakos. We’re going to treat them with the respect they deserve and give our best.”

Spurs are 16th in the Premier League standings, having lost 19 league games, with Postecoglou’s future at the club under scrutiny, but the manager wants to put all that to one side.

“I just don’t think that we can do anything other than really concentrate on the unbelievable opportunity we’ve got before us,” he said.

“Irrespective of what kind of season you have, how often will you be in this position? History tells you not that often.

“So any thoughts about what’s going to happen next year or what’s happened this year is not really of any importance.”

Spurs will again be without forward Son Heung-min, who has missed the last four games with a foot injury, as Postecoglou confirmed he is training separately from the team, but hopes to have the South Korean back before the end of the season.