On October 24, 2018, PSV’s Luke de Jong struck an 87-minute equaliser to seemingly sealed Tottenham Hotspur’s fate in the Champions League.

After three match days, Mauricio Pochettino’s men just had one point, whereas Barcelona had nine and Inter Milan had six points.

In simple words, the North London giants needed a miracle to make it to the next round and that’s what they exactly did in the remaining three matches where they won two and managed an impressive draw in their last group match to qualify for the round-of-16.

Impressive Kane, once again

Harry Kane arrived in Barcelona amid rumours linking him with the Catalan giants and his performance showed why the local media is in love with him.

Just like the last season at Santiago Bernabeu, the 25-year-old showed great commitment, hunger and desire and provided the assist for the team’s only goal in the night.

That was not it as far as his contribution was concerned as Kane had as many as six shots on goal, most by any player in the match.

It was a typical number 9 performance from Kane which shows why he is ranked as the best in his position.

Depth reason behind Spurs recent success

Spurs was always labelled as a team short of depth as it seemed that it was heavily dependent on the trio of Kane, Christian Eriksen and Dele Alli.  

However, Pochettino has gradually strengthened the squad depth with the emergence of the likes of Son Heung-Min, Erik Lamela and Lucas Moura.

On Tuesday, it was another instance where Spurs squad depth came to their rescue with Moura scoring the all-important goal after coming off the bench.

With the North London giants clearly in the mix in the league title race and have now qualified for the round-of-16 in the Champions League, Pochettino will be hoping that the emergence of players like Moura and Son will finally pave the way for the team in achieving big things this season.

Last 16

Spurs were knocked out at this stage last season when Juventus proved too much to handle over the two-legs.

In Turin, Spurs scraped a 2-2 draw despite a first-half drubbing from the Italian giants. 

However, back in London for the second leg, it was Juventus who progressed after a wasteful Spurs failed to take their chances. 

For Spurs to really stake a claim as one of the teams who can go on to win the trophy they must make it to the quarter-finals.