London produced another episode of its notorious travel chaos on the streets and Ange Postecoglou served up her own brand of chaos on the pitch as Tottenham began their European adventure in exciting style.
There was a late start and an early setback, but neither could stop Spurs, who scored three goals against Azerbaijan’s Qarabag despite playing most of the match with 10 men.
Radu Dragusin was sent off in the seventh minute for preventing a scoring opportunity, but Postecoglou never thought about sitting back and playing cautiously.
Instead, he reinforced his back four and left three forward and his team continued to advance.
Brennan Johnson gave them the lead with his third goal in nine days and Pape Matar Sarr added the second, shortly after the break before Dominic Solanke completed the scoring.
Tottenham achieved a comfortable victory over Qarabag, with Dominic Solanke among the scorers
Defender Radun Dragusin was sent off after seven minutes with the score still 0-0
Brennan Johnson, however, got the ball rolling with his third goal in as many games for the Spurs.
But on the other end there were many scares. Qarabag missed a penalty and hit a post when leading 2-0 and forced late saves from Guglielmo Vicario, but Postecoglou’s team deserved their winning start to the Europa League.
Tottenham has won three games in a row since the North London derby loss against Arsenal and will visit Manchester United on Sunday with momentum and forwards scoring.
The stalemate on the streets of north London created an atmosphere of pre-match chaos. Qarabag was caught in traffic and did not arrive at the stadium until 15 minutes before the scheduled 8:00 p.m. kick-off.
The Azeri champions had been staying in a hotel 12 miles away in Stratford, but rail and road closures combined to wreak havoc on everyone heading to the N17, including thousands of supporters.
TNT Sport experts Peter Crouch and Glenn Hoddle had to jump out of their vehicle and set out on foot in the pouring rain. “We gave up on the car,” Crouch said. “We were head down and moving forward.” Hoddle added: “Peter ran and I limped.”
Qarabag are not the first to be caught up in the notoriously congested streets around Tottenham, whose previous European home game was delayed 10 minutes when both teams arrived late due to bad traffic.
That was against AC Milan in the second leg of the Champions League round of 16 in March 2023, when Antonio Conte’s Spurs team failed to overturn a 1-0 deficit from the first leg and crashed.
The Qarabag team bus finally arrived with the help of a police escort along the last kilometer of the journey. Veteran coach Gurban Gurbanov seemed unimpressed when he disembarked, but agreed to prepare as quickly as possible and aim for the start of the match at 8:35 p.m.
In fact, two minutes had passed before they got going and the visitors began happily, as if they were excited to be able to move freely once again. Spurs were caught off guard by their pace and were reduced to 10 men in just seven minutes.
Dragusin’s touch was poor when he collected a pass from Micky van de Ven and Juninho lunged with tremendous speed on the mark, touched the cleared ball and launched himself in pursuit.
Tottenham needed to rely on Guglielmo Vicario on more than one occasion to keep a clean sheet
Dragusin’s red card came after a bad touch and Juninho jumped, but was brought down.
Later in the match, Tural Bayramov stepped up to take a penalty, but his shot went over the bar.
He looked set to accelerate towards goal when he became tangled with Dragusin’s desperate efforts to recover and was brought down. French referee Willy Delajod showed the red card without hesitation.
The Romanian moved away and Postecoglou regrouped. Out came Lucas Bergvall, the teenage midfielder replaced by left-back Destiny Udogie, with Ben Davies moving into the center alongside Van de Ven.
Postecoglou had made six changes to the team that started the Premier League win against Brentford on Saturday, but selected his strongest forward line and it is to his credit that he kept all three of them after the red card.
The reward for their risk came quickly when Solanke and Pape Matar Sarr forced an error from Julio Romao and Johnson produced a clinical finish, for the first time following a Solanke pass.
Johnson missed the chance to extend the lead before being replaced at half-time. The Welsh winger won a run off a pass from Archie Gray and beat Qarabag goalkeeper Mateusz Kochalski into the corner of the penalty area.
It wasn’t simple, it required an instant shot from a difficult position with defenders scrambling for cover and Johnson shot wide.
Qarabag, experienced European champions who gave eventual runners-up Bayer Leverkusen a serious scare in the round of 16 last season, were susceptible in defense to Tottenham’s pressure, but always dangerous on the counterattack, especially once they had the numerical advantage.
They finished the first half on top without taking advantage of their opportunities. Brazilian striker Juninho escaped from Davies only to slip past the best of them when he should have scored.
Pape Matar Sarr (right) scored Spurs’ second, volleying the back post from a corner.
Ange Postecoglou’s team is favorite to win the competition and it is already underway
Sarr scored Tottenham’s second, a side-footed volley to the far post after goalkeeper Kochalski took a corner kick. He should have brought a degree of composure to the game, but he still ran at full speed.
Qarabag continued to waste opportunities, including a penalty, awarded for a dubious foul by Yves Bissouma on an attack on left-back Elvin Jafarguliyev. Tural Bayramov approached and fired, hitting the bar along the way.
Juninho also hit the post, before Solanke made it 3-0 by firing in the rebound when Kochalski couldn’t hold on to Heung-min Son’s shot. Still, Qarabag refused to give in.
Jafarguliyev forced an aerial save from Vicario and Juninho had a header disallowed for offside in the final minutes, but Spurs were now out of trouble.