I was going to write a poem, an emotional and heart-felt outpouring of love and dedication to honour the most incredible football match EVER, won (errr, overall ‘won’, as opposed to ‘on the night’, necessarily) by the greatest team EVER, in what even the most hardened and cynical of Spurs-hating pundits (Paul Merson, Ian Wright, just pick yer Goon) have called ‘possibly the best game ever played’. And I got as far as this:

There is a new footballing superstar
The incredible phenomenon that is V.A.R…

And I thought better of it. Because VAR only tells you what is absolutely and totally ‘correct’, even if no-one had seen, noticed or appealed it on the pitch. It adds nothing and takes away nothing. And it misses nothing. So no-one appealed Llorente’s goal as a handball but VAR chose to examine it because it ‘might’ have been so. But there was insufficient evidence so the goal stood (THANK GODDDD!!!!) Similarly, when Sterling scored what appeared the injury-time ‘winner’, VAR checked for Aguero’s offside even though referees and players didn’t notice. He WAS offside (MERE THANKS BARELY ENOUGH THAT TIME) so all VAR did was correct an injustice. Hmmm.

What VAR doesn’t do is emotion. Passion. Excitement. Shattering disappointment, explosive joy, gut-wrenching agony.

But I also realised that to achieve what Spurs did last night, and last week too, just to keep the big picture in view, was so amazing, so incredible, so odds-contradicting, so seemingly impossible, so mind-numbingly brilliant, that however that had happened would have been a startling achievement. If we had parked a fleet of buses in front of goal and never ventured outside our box, the win would be sweet. Because winning was everything. And we won. Against one of the hardest teams in the world to beat. And we’re now going to play in the semi-finals of the Champions League. Which is massive and a first for Spurs.

But it weren’t like that at all. The result was the same but the journey… fuck me. What a journey.

Five goals in the first 21 minutes of the match. That’s never happened before in the C.League. But Spurs still ahead on ‘away goals’, even at 3-2 down on the night. Then the killer, Aguero scored, 4-2, or 4-3 on aggregate; we’re out. But then the Llorente goal and then, at the most heightened and tense time of the match, deep into injury time, the goal-that-never-was. But before it became that, for Man City, it was just ‘the goal’. And they went fucking ballistic. Every player, fan, coach, steward, tea-lady and cleaner just lost it totally. Similarly every Spurs fan, player, etc., etc., sunk into the deepest darkest depths of deepness and suicidal horrendous ness.

Only for that to be reversed at the flick of a ‘replay’ button on the VAR. Oh well, ya win some, ya lose some.

Lila can now say Son Heung Min. I mean; how many two year-olds can do that? (Answer: all the 2 year olds of Spurs fans).

Amazingly, floating on air, Thursday

A xxxx