The mission was simple. Defend a 3-0 advantage for 90 minutes and earn a berth in the quarterfinals of the 2013 Europa League championship. That mission should have been easy for Tottenham Hotspur, but the 90 minutes turned out to be the nightmare this team had hoped to avoid.
20 minutes in Antonio Cassano started off what could have been the biggest comeback in tournament history. He took a cross and headed the ball into the net from an open position. Tottenham held the team to one goal for the remainder of the half, but at the 52 minute mark when Rodrigo Palacio took advantage of a perfectly placed through-ball. At the 75 minute mark Tottenham's William Gallas deflected a free kick into his own goal to level the aggregate at 3-3.
That forced the game into extra time. At the 96 minute mark, Mousa Dembélé's rifled a shot into the box. Goalie Handanovič parried the shot but Adebayor slid into rebound and gave Tottenham the deciding away goal. Ricardo Alvarez would add a fourth goal for Inter, but the elusive fifth goal never came.
Despite advancing, the performance highlighted Inter's greatest weakness: playing without Gareth Bale. Bale has been at the center of the team's success, but he took a yellow card in the first match with Inter and was suspended from this one. Without him, Tottenham's offense looked lost and indecisive throughout the match.
"'It's always the players who can decide the matches," said Tottenham manager Andre Villas-Boas about the loss. "The coach can only lead them to some kind of failure. What leads the players is their mind; the way they approach the match. I think we suffered from that point of view tonight and that affected our performance on the pitch."
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