Paulo Dybala and Gonzalo Higuain stun Tottenham to send Juventus into Champions League quarter-finals

Were it not for the width of a goal line and 120 second-half seconds, Spurs would be celebrating one of the greatest glory glory nights in their history. Instead, they are left to mull over the embers of a thrilling European campaign that promised so much and yet ended in the narrowest of home defeats to Juventus. Cruelly, they are the first of the five English sides to fall.

Mauricio Pochettino could not help but immediately disappear down the tunnel as his stunned players collapsed to the turf. “It was not a lack of experience, but a lack of concentration,” he insisted in his press conference after the match, as the Juventus celebrations continued outside. “But in the way that we lost, I am proud.”

A goal to the good at half-time thanks to the irrepressible Son Heung-min, Spurs were less than half an hour from the quarter-finals of the Champions League, only for Juventus to mount their devastatingly effective comeback. With the tie slipping from their grasp, Gonzalo Higuain and Paulo Dybala — previously conspicuous through their absence — struck to send the Italian champions through. “That was what I call a suffered victory,” Massimiliano Allegri said later, with a puff of his cheeks. “But we were always confident we would score against them.”

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Two defensive mistakes cost Tottenham. And — for once — Harry Kane was not on hand to save them. Time and again Kane has single-handedly rescued Tottenham from the most perilous of situations, but this time Gigi Buffon’s far post and the white of the goal line denied him, his heroically late header falling inches short of sending Tottenham through.

This was the harshest possible way for Tottenham to wake up from their European dream, especially considering they had started this match in such a dominant fashion. And even in defeat, the live-wire performance of Son must be lauded. From the outset he was sensational, wasting precisely zero time in stretching the legs of 36-year-old Andrea Barzagli. The wily old veteran may know every defensive dark art in the book, but against the fizz of Son he struggled desperately. The South Korean did not deserve to be on the losing team.

And yet it was a full-throttle burst into space at the other end of the pitch which saw Juventus come close to taking the lead early on and preventing the need for their last-gasp comeback, and presented the first moment of controversy on a frequently fractious evening.

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Collecting the ball on the edge of the penalty area, Douglas Costa— once strongly linked with a move to these parts — sidestepped the floundering Jan Vertonghen and cut neatly into the box. Vertonghen, now sickeningly aware he was part of a five-pace foot race he could not win, lunged desperately at the ball, as if impersonating Serge Aurier in a game of charades. It was a clear foul and blatant penalty — and yet after an anxious glance at his assistant, referee Szymon Marciniak waved away Juventus’ furious protests.

Stung into action, Spurs pressed on. Dele Alli brought out the best of Buffon with a powerful low strike, before Son spurned a fine chance by firing wide. It took him a matter of seconds to make amends. Hurtling into the box in pursuit of a clipped Christian Eriksen pass, Alli was wiped out by Barzagli only for the ball to fall kindly for Kieran Trippier. The full-back pinged the ball back across the box to the waiting Son, who scuffed his shot into the turf, the ball looping dreamily over the dives of Giergio Chiellini and Buffon. Wembley erupted and then exhaled; the night’s nervous energy dissipating into something resembling belief.

Allegri, aware that this tie was now slipping away from him and spooked by his player’s inability to take the game to Tottenham in the opening exchanges of the second-half, decided to shuffle his pack. On came Kwadwo Asamoah and Stephan Lichtsteiner in search of a path back. “We must give credit to those two substitutes because they changed the game,” he said afterwards, accurately if perhaps a little immodestly.

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His gamble paid off. Floating out onto the wing, Lichtsteiner evaded Ben Davies on the overlap and curled the ball into the box. Sami Khedira got across Sanchez and nodded it forward, where Higuain woke from his slumber and found himself in an unexpected pocket of space, Trippier’s attention momentarily diverted by the moment of Asamoah. From six-yards out he could not miss.

It took just three minutes for things to get a whole lot worse and, again, Tottenham’s defence was to blame. Collecting the ball with his back to goal, Higuain bisected Tottenham’s entire backline with an anodyne prod forward, punishing Sanchez’s rash decision to step forward. And just like that Dybala was free, scampering towards goal and belting the ball beyond Lloris.

“It is disappointing because until those two chances we were a lot better,” Pochettino later reflected. Perhaps Toby Alderweireld is worth those extra few pounds after all.

On came Erik Lamela but, chasing the game, Tottenham suddenly found themselves against this Juventus team at their best: dug in firmly behind their deep defensive line, ruggedly sustaining ever increasing waves of pressure. Lamela’s trickery out wide came close to picking the lock, Son wrapped a long-range strike around the post and Eriksen crashed a speculative attempt wide — still that yellow wall held firm.

Unsurprisingly, Kane came the closest to salvaging the tie. Thundering onto the end of a Davies cross he headed the ball back across Buffon, the ball falling onto the far post and rolling tauntingly back across the goal line. It was hacked clear. It is during the closing stages of the very biggest matches that the true character of a team is revealed: Juventus had both the luck and steel to survive.