Champions League preview: Tottenham v Inter Milan
“Clattenburg is responsible for one of the worst refereeing decisions ever. He’s had a nightmare.
“The officials will come up with a story that makes it look right. That’s the way it happens. He made a c**k-up, but he’ll come up with some excuse.
“I wonder whether Clattenburg would have blown if a Spurs player had done what Nani did at Old Trafford? What a farcical way to finish a game.”
And with that Harry Redknapp closed the book on one of the more controversial decisions seen in the Premier League this season, although the FA will still probably want to discuss the issue of referee Mark Clattenburg with the Tottenham Hotspur manager – a touchline ban surely awaits.
Nani’s bizarre goal that confirmed Manchester United’s victory over Spurs is now in the past though, and it’s onto what is probably Tottenham’s biggest game of the season.
“Gareth Bale isn’t unstoppable,” said Rafael Benitez, even though his Inter Milan players did a good impression of making him look like he was when these two sides met at the San Siro two weeks ago, when the Welshman turned a four goal deficit into a 4-3 defeat virtually all on his own.
”We conceded goals because we relaxed when we were 4-0 ahead, thinking of the next game.
“The first half was very different from the second half, a totally different game, but we’d already done enough to win. We won’t relax in the game in London. We know what we have to do and we’ll make sure we play well enough to get a good result.”
Good results have been what Benitez has got during his first few months in charge of the European champions, but he won’t be relishing a return to White Hart Lane, the ground that saw the beginning of the end of his Liverpool reign, as last season’s 2-1 defeat in the Reds’ opening match of the campaign turned his side from title contenders to mid-table also-rans almost overnight.
He heads back with a much superior side of course, but this will be a tough task for the Spaniard and his team, not least because of the presence of another Rafael.
“Big players love big games and we have to show that we have that quality,” said Rafael van der Vaart, who will be fit to face Inter despite limping off at Old Trafford on Saturday.
“These are the games when the spotlight is on you as individuals to produce and it is on this stage that we must perform to show our entitlement to be there. No it won't be easy, how can it be? This is Inter Milan in the Champions League. But we have shown our fighting spirit and that anything in football is possible if you have the belief to make it happen.
“We proved that point with 10 men against a very good Inter side when, had we played another five or so minutes, we might have got it back to 4-4. We had the momentum towards the end and we have to maintain that outlook from the start in front of our own fans.”
Van der Vaart is all too aware of Inter’s quality, not least because of one man in the team he knows very well.
“He's a great player and we're still very good friends,” he said of Wesley Sneijder, a Dutch international colleague who is one of the favourites to crowned European Footballer of the Year.
“We first met at the Ajax academy when I was 10 and he was nine, and we went on to play in the first team and the national side together before meeting up again at Real Madrid.
“He's a player we have to contain because he's their inspiration in midfield. True they have many good players but we have to make them worry about us and ensure that this game is dictated by what we do.
“We showed Inter what we're about in the second half at the San Siro - now we have to believe that we can do it again.”
Both Dutchmen will be central to their team’s plans, but with Inter aware that victory will take them into the last 16, it will be the Italians who rightly start as favourites.
Spurs will be without the suspended Heurelho Gomes following his red card in the San Siro, and still with various defensive problems, a defeat here could be expected.
They’ll still have two matches to put things right in the group, but a bad week for Redknapp is about to get worse.
Prediction: Tottenham 1 Inter Milan 2
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