Toby Alderweireld
can still feel the stab of regret. Perhaps it will never truly leave him. After all, how many times can a player come within touching distance of the European Cup, only to see it whisked away?
The Tottenham Hotspur defender had entered the 2014 final as an 83rd-minute substitute for Atlético Madrid and with stoppage time almost over, they were 1-0 up against their city rivals, Real.
Then Sergio Ramos made a run that took him across four Atlético defenders and on to Luka Modric's corner kick. He timed his leap and the header to perfection and everybody connected to Atlético can still see the ball knifing its way into the far corner of their net. Real would win 4-1 in extra time.
“Of course it hurts,” Alderweireld says. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to win the Champions League. We gave everything in the 90 minutes, and extra time was difficult. I look back at the whole season – we had won La Liga the previous weekend, and two days after the final I was preparing for the World Cup with Belgium. I’ve tried to look at it that way, not only the negatives.”
Alderweireld was reminded that night in Lisbon of the importance of ruthlessness and looking after the smallest of details.
Conviction
However, he took a more general point away from Atlético’s run to the final, one that bolsters his conviction ahead of Tottenham’s Champions League Group E tie at
CSKA Moscow
tonight. “It’s that every team can win the Champions League if you put your mind on it. If you have a good squad and the hunger is there to win something, you can do it.
“At Atlético, we had the big teams like Barça, Real, Bayern Munich – they were always the favourites. But if you are a really good group – and, of course, we had quality, too – you can win it. That’s the thing that has stayed with me.”
Alderweireld is not saying that Tottenham can win the Champions League this season, merely that they ought to approach their CSKA assignment without an underdog complex.
“We have to be confident in our quality and confident that we can get the result against any team,” he says.
Leonid Slutsky’s CSKA are unbeaten in the Russian Premier League since last April – 16 matches – and they made a promising start to their Champions League campaign with a 2-2 draw at Bayer Leverkusen, having been 2-0 down. The game against Spurs will take place at the new, 30,000-capacity Arena CSKA, which opened on September 10th.
Alderweireld has played in Moscow before, for an Ajax team that featured his Spurs colleagues Jan Vertonghen and Christian Eriksen. It was March 2011 and Ajax lost 3-0 to Spartak Moscow to depart the last 16 of the Europa League.
Matured
Alderweireld has matured since his Champions League final appearance for Atlético. He excelled on a season-long loan at Southampton and since his £11.4 million move to Tottenham in July last year, he has been the cornerstone of the Premier League’s most frugal defence. The 27-year-old has also come to be considered as the heir apparent to [Manchester City’s] Vincent Kompany in the Belgium team.
“At Ajax, I got an education in how to be confident on the ball, my technique, and then, at Atlético, I learned how to defend,” he says. “It was about the details, the ruthlessness; be clinical in front of your own goal, win every duel, be clever. I learned so much.
"Diego Simeone [the Atlético manager] taught me to enjoy clean sheets. Even if it's 3-0 or 4-0, like it was at Stoke two weeks ago, the thing is to get the clean sheet, to get good numbers . . . Always be focused and never let it go." Guardian Service
