Tottenham Hotspur hit back from a goal down to win 2-1 away at AEL Limassol in the first leg of their Europa League playoff.<\/p>\n
Cypriot outfit AEL looked set to inflict a shock defeat on Mauricio Pochettino’s side, as Adrian Sardinero fired them into an early lead, but Erik Lamela\u2019s game-changing introduction in hot and humid conditions altered the course of the tie as he assisted second-half replies from Roberto Soldado and Harry Kane.<\/p>\n
It is fair to say neither club nor player will have been pleased with the way things have gone since Lamela arrived at White Hart Lane last summer in a club-record \u00a330million deal.<\/p>\n
The Argentine forward managed just three league starts for Spurs in an injury-disrupted debut season but at last he is showing signs of promise, with his introduction here the catalyst to Tottenham’s victory.<\/p>\n
Soldado should have given Spurs the lead after five minutes, only to shoot horribly wide from close range, albeit off-balance, after Karim Fegrouch parried a Kane strike into his path.<\/p>\n
Things could have got better still for the 22-year-old, directing a Kyle Naughton cross just wide before being denied by the AEL goalkeeper towards the end of a game which could be the making of him.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tottenham Hotspur hit back from a goal down to win 2-1 away at AEL Limassol in the first leg of their Europa League playoff. Cypriot outfit AEL looked set to inflict a shock defeat on Mauricio Pochettino’s side, as Adrian Sardinero fired them into an early lead, but Erik Lamela\u2019s game-changing introduction in hot and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,80],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4616"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4616"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4618,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4616\/revisions\/4618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}