After weeks of frustration, Timo Werner has scored Tottenham’s League Cup win over Manchester City. He particularly liked the fans’ reaction afterwards.
Not a few in the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium probably already had an idea of what would happen when Dejan Kulusevskis’ flat delivery reached Timo Werner, who had come in from the left, with pinpoint accuracy. But then suddenly they all cheered: Werner, who had missed so many high-quality chances in the past few weeks and had looked increasingly miserable in the process, shot the ball powerfully into the net with conviction.
Of course, everyone was primarily celebrating Tottenham’s 2-1 victory over Manchester City in the League Cup round of 16, but Werner, who had initiated the victory in the fifth minute, was not far behind. After weeks of frustration, in which he had wasted every chance that coach Ange Postecoglou had given him in the various cup competitions, to the point where he was even preferred to 17-year-old Mikey Moore on the left wing, he could feel like one of the match winners. When was the last time he experienced that?
Werner relieved: “Yes, all the hard work has paid off”
“If you’re a striker and you don’t score, to be honest you think too much in front of goal,” Werner admitted afterwards to the Spurs TV channel. All the more important was the goal after this “difficult” time – and all the more beautiful was the reaction of the fans: “I think it was less of a ‘finally he’s done it’ and more of a relief for me in the sense of ‘we’ve seen him do it one day’. And finally I did it. Yes, the hard work paid off in the end and I have to keep it up.”
While coach Ange Postecoglou expressed his hope that Werner’s “great” goal would “give him a boost”, Spurs fans made fun of Werner’s first goal of the season, only his third in 26 competitive appearances for Tottenham. “Timo Werner – he scores when he wants,” they sang, which was, of course, highly ironic, but certainly also meant sympathetically. The fact that his teammates immediately surrounded him after the 1-0 fit the picture.
After he had created chances for himself to score more goals, but also missed one more time, Werner finally limped off the pitch in the 68th minute. But in contrast to Micky van den Ven, who was also injured (thigh problems), the Leipzig loan player seems to have come through the game well. “Timo didn’t play much, I had the feeling it was more tiredness,” Postecoglou later reported.
