Tottenham End Wembley Jinx, but Work Is Still Required to Make It Feel Like Home

WEMBLEY STADIUM, London — Some moments are great anywhere.

Tottenham Hotspur's fit-again defender Toby Alderweireld made his first appearance in almost two months in his side's 3-1 Champions League win over CSKA Moscow. The reception he received was so loud the noise filled just about every part of Wembley Stadium.

It would have been great at White Hart Lane, too. But with a crowd almost double their usual attendance, the roar offered an example of what playing in the national stadium can offer for Tottenham.

Who knows how loud it would have sounded with the 85,000-plus who came for the north Londoners' games versus Monaco and Bayer Leverkusen.

Two defeats in those games at the temporary venue—the relocation forced by UEFA regulations ruling out using White Hart Lane during its ongoing redevelopment—led to Tottenham's elimination from the Champions League. A crowd of 62,034 turned up to watch them round off their participation, in the process securing a place in the Europa League for the new year.

"First of all I want to say thank you to our supporters, they were brilliant again, 62,000," the club's manager Mauricio Pochettino said in his post-match press conference. "It was difficult, out of the Champions League, [but] I think it showed how big our club is. Thank you to them on behalf of my staff and all the players."

It was an unusual occasion for both the fans and the team.

There was something to play and cheer for, just not what they wanted it to be heading toward the end of 2016.

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Each commendably made the best of it and were able to create some optimism over what Wembley could be for Spurs, both in the Europa League and in their scheduled season-long stay for 2017-18.

Up until now it had been hard to get away from the novelty feeling surrounding these "home" games. They have felt like attraction events rather than the White Hart Lane-experience transposed across the capital.

The club's building-up of the experience as a major occasion before the Monaco game especially did not help this. The enthusiasm was understandable, though. The combination of genuine excitement at being back in the Champions League for the first time in five years and ensuring the ground was filled meant maximising publicity and interest was inevitable.

The nice side of big crowds is moments like the aforementioned Alderweireld reception. In the group-stage opener against Monaco, the initial atmosphere was full of positive intent, while the cheers before each fixture when the tournament's famous pre-match music concluded was goosebump-inducing.

The problem with such a large crowd is that a big section of it is not the club's core support.

They are less predisposed to the singing and chanting that is vital to making relatively unfamiliar surroundings feel the team's own, especially in a stadium as cavernous at Wembley.

The club worked hard to make it feel like their place, with the usual pre-match video montages on the big screen and a big, slightly intimidating club badge/giant cockerel hanging over the pitch. But unlike in neutral games where the tickets are split 50-50 and the atmosphere benefits from the spirit of confrontation, the onus to generate it was firmly on Spurs.

The supporters who are not regular attendees to the club's games had every right to buy the available seats for these European nights—Spurs' long season-ticket waiting list shows it was not just a case of bandwagon-jumping, too.

Although it is something special at its best, the White Hart Lane atmosphere is hardly unimpeachable either.

Still, with so many supporters recording the new/different experience, taking photos from the top of Wembley Park tube station and along Wembley Way, these games often felt like days out for many rather than them coming to do their part by backing their team.

Yet Spurs are not completely doomed to a soulless experience in their Wembley visits to come.

There were more than respectable efforts from parts of the crowd against CSKA Moscow to get some singing going, to make the behemoth feel more intimate.

For a while these echoed in the cavernous arena (at least sitting in the press area), as pockets of noise rather than full blasts aimed at the pitch. Gradually, their persistence was rewarded, informing a larger contribution from throughout the ground.

They were helped by the goals and Alderweireld's introduction—though the support probably also did its part encouraging the players after they went behind to Alan Dzagoev's opener. By the time a stirring rendition of "When the Spurs Go Marching In" began just prior to the 70-minute mark, they had hinted at how they could make Wembley work for them.

It was not quite Fortress Tottenham, but there were enough bunkers of resistance to make any enemy think twice about having their way completely here.

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Thankfully for the supporters, the players eventually did their part.

Beforehand, they had made clear their desire to get off the mark at their soon-to-be full-time residence, in the process ending a six-game, eight-year run without a win there. In their minds, it had little to do with any jinx.

"We just need to look forward and try to create a positive dynamic in this stadium," captain and goalkeeper Hugo Lloris told Spurs' official matchday programme. "Another important thing is to finish this period in the Champions League well in front of our home fans. They deserve that, and we need to get the three points—even if only for our minds and for our confidence of playing here at Wembley."

Harry Kane believes the team were "punished for silly mistakes" in their games before this.

"As I touched on after the defeat to Monaco in our last game, it is our home form that has let us down," he told Jon Rayner, also in the programme. "People mention about Wembley but that wasn't the case at all, we just didn't play well enough in those matches."

Like in their preceding 5-0 win over Swansea City in the Premier League, it is difficult to judge just how much Tottenham's improvement was them playing well and how much it was CSKA Moscow underwhelming. Bar occasional long-ball moves, the Russians showed few signs of troubling their hosts.

You can only beat who is in front of you, though.

Unlike against Monaco and Leverkusen, Tottenham made good use of the Wembley pitch's width to stretch CSKA. Along with the nominal wide-men Christian Eriksen and Heung-Min Son coming inside to get involved, midfielders Victor Wanyama and Harry Winks worked well as pivot points.

Spurs sometimes lazily revert to aimless crosses, but here the switches from flank-to-flank were purposeful, serving to tire the chasing visitors and were well served by pinpoint crosses. It also allowed them to exploit spaces left behind in the channels as the Russians anticipated passes to the wings or centres themselves.

At times the Lilywhites' finishing was wasteful. Dzagoev scored his goal after Dele Alli and Eriksen both blew golden early chances.

Fortunately for Alli, he took his next big chance when it came in the 38th minute. By the time his header went in off Igor Akinfeev for Spurs' third, building on Kane's tap-in just prior to half-time, CSKA's defence had given up marking.

Altogether it was an enjoyable night for Tottenham, recording another morale-boosting win ahead of Sunday's tough trip to top-four rivals Manchester United.

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"I think the performance was good, it was good that we could win here, that was important to us," Pochettino said in his post-match press conference. "To change the bad feeling that was after Monaco and Leverkusen was very important. I think we are much better, after Monaco [the 2-1 loss away] our performance against Chelsea and Swansea and today, I think we are playing better and start to show our real quality."

Though disappointed to be exiting the Champions League so early, the Spurs boss was keen to look forward.

"I think we have the opportunity to play more games here—that is very important to make Wembley our home. And I think the Europa League is a very good competition to go far in, why not to believe we can win that competition?"

For now, Pochettino and all at Tottenham can at least find some contentment in ending their 2016 Wembley experience in a positive fashion. Work needs to be done to make it truly homely, but this, belatedly, was a start.

Quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.