Because White Hart Lane was being rebuilt, the Tottenham Hotspur home match against Inter Milan in the fifth round of Champions League Group B was once again held at Wembley Stadium.
Before the match, the two teams faced completely different situations.
Tottenham Hotspur were certainly brave, and their performance in the Group of Death had been commendable, but they had not been good enough at securing points.
Their biggest problem was that they had suffered three straight defeats in the first three rounds. Although all three had been narrow losses, they had still failed to earn any points. After being held to a disappointing draw at home by Ajax in the fourth round, they had practically been eliminated from the group stage ahead of time.
That was the cruelty of the Group of Death.
With Tottenham Hotspur's strength, they would have been contenders to advance from any of the other seven groups. But in Group B, against the upstart Ajax, the seasoned Bayern Munich, and the mature and composed Inter Milan, Tottenham Hotspur had still lost some of their advantages.
With just one point from four rounds and elimination from the group stage already almost certain, everyone had predicted before the match that Tottenham Hotspur would not have much fighting spirit.
Inter Milan, on the other hand, had taken five points from their first four matches. They were just one game behind Ajax and Bayern Munich, which meant the Serie A side would surely give everything they had on the road against Tottenham Hotspur and fight desperately for a victory.
Therefore, before kickoff, the media, fans, and bookmakers were all backing Inter Milan without exception.
But the result once again left everyone stunned.
From the very beginning, Tottenham Hotspur used their home advantage to launch an aggressive assault on Inter