It was all so intoxicating, wasn't it? Ange Postecoglou, the grizzled Australian with a no-nonsense charm and a footballing philosophy soaked in attacking flair, swaggered into North London like a long-lost messiah. Spurs, a club perennially teetering on the precipice of greatness but more often plunging into self-sabotage, finally looked reborn. Seven wins from nine, an unthinkable point at the Emirates – home of hated rivals Arsenal – and a VAR-assisted eclipse of Liverpool. The football was brave, breathless.
Postecoglou became the first manager to win the Premier League Manager of the Month award for the first three months of a single season. Talk of a title challenge echoed throughout the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the monolith that more than any signing symbolised the club's ambitions to establish itself not only as a force at home but in Europe, too.
Fast forward 18 months and the picture looks very different. The revolution has turned to rubble. Spurs are a club in freefall with only the safety net of three teams more abject than them already condemned to relegation. They even face the prospect of being overhauled by West Ham United, a club they have long looked down their noses at, in the battle for 16th place.
You don't need a forensic analysis to find out why the ship is sinking without a trace. Spurs are the division's third highest scorers but the fifth worst defenders. Of 34 games played, 19 have ended in defeat. Tottenham are on course for their worst league finish since the 1993/94 season when they came home 15th. Postecoglou's win percentage is a smidge over 46 per cent, worse than Antonio Conte, Jose Mourinho and Mauricio Pochettino, Andre Villas-Boas and Harry Redknapp of the permanent head coaches that preceded him with more than 50 games in charge.
The last time Tottenham won a trophy was 2008. After blitzing out of the blocks last season, Spurs stuttered over the line to finish fifth, enough to clinch a place in the Europa League. It could be that competition which offers Spurs not only their salvation but keeps Postecoglou in a job.
Spurs have won seven and drawn three of their 12 Europa League matches this season. They put in arguably their best performance of the campaign in their previous match, a hard-fought 1-0 win away at Eintracht Frankfurt where courage, in short supply for much of the season, was embodied by James Maddison putting his body on the line as he was wiped out by goalkeeper Kaua Santos to earn Spurs the penalty, converted by Dominic Solanke, that sealed their passage to the semi-finals.
Laying in wait are Bodo/Glimt, a club many would struggle to find on a map, let alone fear on a pitch. Theirs is a fairytale with a frostbitten edge. The tiny club from just north of the Arctic Circle have been champions of Norway four years running and are the first team from the Scandinavian country to play in the semi-finals of a major European competition.
It is a stunning achievement for a side from a town with a population of barely 50,000 – one that would fit comfortably into Tottenham's stadium with room to spare – situated almost 1,200 kilometres north of Norway's capital Oslo.
If Tottenham are the city slickers, Bodo are the country bumpkins. Spurs were the ninth-richest club in the world last year with revenue of €615 million, according to analysts Deloitte. Bodo have an annual turnover of around €30m, around 20 times less than their opponents, though that will be swelled by an additional €20m from their Europa League run, according to reports.
On paper this should be a walkover for the English club, but in a season littered with disappointment Spurs have been especially poor against weaker opposition. Postecoglou's men have been beaten at home by relegated Leicester City and Ipswich Town, been mauled by Wolves, lost to each of Brentford, Brighton, Bournemouth and Crystal Palace and taken only a point off Fulham. There remains, at the heart of this Postecoglou side, a softness under pressure – a sense that when the going gets tough, too many in lilywhite are lily-livered.
With the first leg at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Thursday, Spurs will do well to make home advantage count. The Norwegian champions’ remarkable run to the semi-finals has included victories over FC Twente, Olympiacos and, in the quarter-finals, a dramatic penalty shoot-out win against Lazio. Bodo suffered a defeat to Azerbaijani side Qarabag in the new-look group phase but their victory over Lazio in the first leg, courtesy of two goals by Ulrik Saltnes, came only after snow from a blizzard had been cleared off the pitch at their 8,270-capacity Aspmyra Stadium.
When Spurs travel to Norway for the return leg on May 8, the players will find an artificial grass pitch and a stadium open to the elements and with a stand from 1966.
The stadium sits only 400 metres from Bodo Airport, surrounded by mountains. The nearest large towns are 10 hours drive to the north and south.
“I don’t think it will be snowing [for the match against Spurs]. [But] Of course it can be snowy in the first week of May,” Bodo CEO Frode Thomassen told Forbes.
“When Tottenham or Lazio take a flight to Bodo and come to Aspmyra, it must be like going back in time 50 years. You meet nature and you meet football in its purest sense.”
