Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Champions League Place Drives Spurs & City


With 4th place and a place in the UEFA Champions League at stake, tomorrow's English Premier League match between Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City proves to be a playoff match with massive implications.

Both Patrick Vieira and Peter Crouch have played on the UEFA Champions League football stage before, and the duo talk about what's at stake tomorrow.

“It’s winner takes all on Wednesday,” Crouch, the Tottenham striker, said.

Vieira, the City midfield player, said: “We have our destiny in our own hands.”

Crouch knows exactly what Tottenham have been missing, having enjoyed Champions League football at Liverpool. “It is where every footballer wants to be; the night games, the great atmosphere,” he said. “When the music starts the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. It’s fantastic, that’s where we want to be. A club like Tottenham deserves to be there as they are such a big club with fantastic fans who backed us all the way. To get some of the big European games down at the Lane would be just magic.”

A Spurs victory would seal fourth spot and, as the North London side face relegated Burnley on the final day, City cannot realistically be content with a draw tomorrow either.

“The first step was to beat Villa [on Saturday] and we did that extremely well,” Vieira, the former captain of Arsenal, Tottenham’s great rivals, said. “The next one is Tottenham and that is going to be more difficult. It doesn’t make any difference that it is Spurs. I am past that stage. I am not focused on that [rivalry] any more.

“With the players we have in the dressing room the target has to be, and still is, the Champions League. The club made it very clear they wanted the Champions League and we are really close. We will have to fight for it, it will not be easy but then it has not been easy in the last few months. But we can do it now.”

According to Crouch, Tottenham are no longer a team liable to fold under the pressure of potential league success. “We have a lot more physical strength, a lot more mental strength,” he said. “The resilience is there, we seem to get results even when we have to dig in and fight and maybe that has not been the case in previous years. Now we are a lot more consistent.”

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