Tottenham’s Ange Postecoglou laments the waste in Roma’s draw

LONDON – Ange Postecoglou lamented his Tottenham Hotspur side’s profligacy in front of goal in their 2-2 draw with Roma in the Europa League on Thursday, but added that he still felt his side were in a good position in the competition “strong position”.

This puts Spurs in ninth place in the Europa League table, one place outside of the automatic qualification places for the round of 16.

Mats Hummels’ stoppage-time goal earned the Serie A side a point, 86 minutes after the defender gave away the penalty that Son Heung-Min converted to give Spurs the lead in the early stages of an entertaining game in north London to provide.

Evan Ndicka’s header initially brought Roma level before Brennan Johnson swept home Dejan Kulusevski’s cross and appeared to score the winner before Hummels’ late strike.

“Of course I’m frustrated with the way the game ended. We should have ended it much earlier,” Postecoglou said at a post-match press conference.

“With the chances we had, we should have pushed hard in the first half, and when the score is 2-1 you always somehow keep the opponent in the game and throw men forward. So we weren’t disappointing. “We can still see the game out, but ultimately we’re still in a good position.”

Spurs finished the game with 24 shots on goal, with Kulusevski, Pedro Porro and Dominic Solanke all finding the net.

“I think our football was still good tonight, but… We just lacked a little bit of the necessary thrill to finish the game. But overall in this whole European competition we had some challenges in the first five games,” Postecoglou added. “So we are in a strong position and that is the main thing.”

Roma had 18 shots of their own and saw three goals disallowed for offside. Postecoglou was asked about his side’s high-risk style of play and whether they needed to focus more on simply getting positive results in the coming games, but the Spurs boss said he would not try to change his attitude.

“No. Why can’t it just be entertaining? Isn’t that why we all came? Would you really prefer us to plan for a couple of 0-0 draws and a 1-0 win to help us progress? I don’t know, I would much prefer it if we watched in an exciting way,” said Postecoglou.

“Maybe it’s side notes and sometimes you don’t get the reward that we could have tonight, but I think if you want games like that, mate, there’s plenty in world football that you could watch every weekend. That’s what I would do.” I think if you tune in, you’ll be entertained.

Roma head coach Claudio Ranieri admitted he did not expect his team to produce the same level of performance as they did at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

“Today we showed a very good performance,” said Ranieri. “I didn’t expect that, especially not in the second half. I thought we might have more problems, but we kept pushing.”

The Italian team has endured a turbulent season, sitting in 12th place in Serie A after 13 games of the season. The former Leicester City coach came out of retirement and was appointed Roma’s third head coach for the season on November 14th , after Daniele De Rossi was eliminated four games into the season and Ivan Juric reigned for twelve games.

Ranieri admitted Roma were one of only two teams he would have considered coming out of retirement for.

“Let’s first see how the season ends before saying it was the right decision (coming out of retirement and taking the Roma job),” Ranieri said. “This time I really thought I could travel around the world… Because as a coach you only go to hotels, airports, stadiums.”

“When I retired I said that a national team would probably have been a good option, but deep in my heart I knew there were two teams I couldn’t say no to if they ever came calling. And Roma was.” One of them, of course, but I want to make it clear that I really hoped that those two teams would never have called me because that would have meant they would have needed me.

Ranieri confirmed that the other team he had in mind was Cagliari, who he had already coached twice.

Spurs face Rangers in their next Europa League game on December 12, while Roma host Braga at the Stadio Olimpico.