Gloss taken off impressive Spurs win in Milan by media reaction to Gattuso and Jordan’s post-match hand flapping

Spurs have happily defied my early season expectation so far. Having manfully qualified for the Champions League last season, I was fully expecting this season to be a holiday of sorts in the rarefied surroundings of top class European football, but it has been anything but.

Battling to retain their Champions League status and deal with a packed Premier League fixture list is a demanding task, which can certainly take its toll on a team, particularly one that is unaccustomed to doing so.

Harry Redknapp and his team have tackled this problem though with a seeming nonchalance, as if his side have always been comfortable in the knowledge that they can realise their dreams of European glory and confound expectation at the same time.

This isn’t to say that they’re giant killers and are imposters on the big stage, as they’re home performances against Inter and Tuesday’s win over AC will testify to.

It is simply that Spurs qualification for the group stages of the Champions League has ensured that the monopoly on qualification for Europe’s biggest competition had been broken, one which appeared to be unbreakable in its security and was seemingly exclusively populated by Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and United.

Not content with enjoying their day in the sun, Spurs have developed and have shown none of the naivety expected of virgins to the competition. Instead they have been a collectively organised unit that has been willing to attack and has been ruthless when required.

Peter Crouch’s 80th minute winner and the fact that Spurs have one foot in the quarter-finals of the competition should be the focus of the media’s attention, but the press have clearly been distracted.

After the jubilation of fans had tempered, the press decided to be collectively downbeat and focus on a minor scuffle that happened after the final whistle.

Now obviously Gattuso was wrong in his actions and he was clearly an extremely frustrated individual, who has rightly apologised for his actions, but was this incident really worthy of such attention, when compared to the excellent performance of the Spurs players?

The Guardian, which usually refrains from such sensationalist nonsense, decided that it would have a go at tabloid melodrama with the above headline.

This seems to be a little excessive. A fight would have been one thing to report, but giving such great attention to a lot of hand flapping that at best could be described as a bit of a bru-hah-hah is definitely sensationalistic.

This is exaggerated by the fact that if Milan had been playing a team who weren’t from England the whole incident would have undoubtedly not been reported in any of the popular press then Milan’s reputation would have remained intact, as far as British fans were concerned.

Milan’s largely limp, lifeless and laborious performance on the pitch was surely a greater attack on their reputation as elder statesmen of European competition.

This though is merely a distraction from Spurs performance on Tuesday and their progression as a team increasingly comfortable in the Champions League and in the upper echelons of the Premier League.

If the press had to focus on the hand flapping then they should surely have done so from a different angle. There’s clearly no glory in fighting an old man and Joe Jordan should feel ashamed.

Tags: AC Milan, Tottenham Hotspur, UEFA Champions League