Tottenham v Shamrock Rovers – live! | Paolo Bandini

• Hit F5 to refresh or turn on the automatic widget below • Email paolo.bandini@guardian.co.uk or tweet @Paolo_Bandini • Follow all tonight’s latest scores in the Europa League 4 mins Rovers’ travelling support are making an impressive racket at White Hart Lane, but perhaps unsurprisingly there are a lot of empty seats throughout the home support section. Hard to get worked up about a competition, I suppose, when your club’s manager has rarely seemed especially excited to be in it. 2 mins And it is Tottenham, indeed, who have the first shot of the evening, Brush gathering comfortably enough after Giovani Dos Santos picked up a loose ball about 25 yards out and decided to try his luck. The shot was firmly struck, but pretty much straight at the goalkeeper in the end. 1 min Off we go. Carlo Cudicini is the first keeper to touch the ball, but it’s nothing too troubling – just a comfortable slide to gather a loose ball inside the box. Make-believe magic “Seeing unlikely teams like Shamrock Rovers doing well European competition always makes me drift off to my glory days on Championship/Football Manager,” writes Martin. “Champions League final with Northwich Victoria? Happy days.” Funnily enough one of my greatest ever memories of pretend management came with Derry City. Reached the Champions League group stage and won at Old Trafford in one of those happy games where your keeper just won’t be beaten. Lost 6-0 at Club Brugge and went out bottom of the group, mind. Rohan Ricketts Has been interviewed by Five before kick-off. My he does always seem like a very happy man. “I’d say maybe a decline club stature,” he says when his interviewer rather bluntly asks if he considers his career to be a failure. Is it possible to adjudge your career either way when you’re still only 28? Personally I’m not planning to give up hope of my own first international call-up until I’m at least 45. Team news: As expected, Sébastien Bassong, Aaron Lennon, Giovani Dos Santos, and Roman Pavlyuchenko are all among Tottenham’s starting XI, but the more surprising inclusion is Jermain Defoe. A mark of how seriously Harry Redknapp is taking this game, or a sign that he won’t be getting the nod to start against Arsenal this weekend? Shamrock Rovers leave the recently acquired former Tottenham midfielder Rohan Ricketts on the bench. Tottenham: Cudicini, Walker, Corluka, Bassong, Rose, Lennon, Carroll, Livermore, Giovani, Defoe, Pavlyuchenko. Subs: Gomes, Bale, Kaboul, Modric, Falque, Townsend, Kane. Shamrock Rovers: Brush, Sullivan, Sives, Murray, Rice, O’Donnell, Paterson, Dennehy, Finn, McCabe, Twigg. Subs: Thompson, Stevens, Sheppard, Kilduff, Turner, McCormack, Ricketts. Referee: Gediminas Mazeika (Lithuania) Evening all On one side, a team who feel so passionately about this game that they told most of their starters to take the night off. On the other, a team who potentially stand to earn more this evening than they would by winning their own domestic championship. Three decades removed from the heady days of John Giles, Eamon Dunphy and Jim Beglin, Shamrock Rovers are once again revelling in the European stage . Tottenham may be ready to leave this stadium behind, but for Shamrock Rovers a night at White Hart Lane is a dream 30 years in the making . Whether or not Tottenham are the strongest side in this group remains to be proven – especially without their first-choice players – but as Daniel McDonnell reflected in the Irish Independent today, “this is the glamour tie, the Kodak moment”. More than 2,500 Rovers fans have made the trip from Dublin, a number that will be swelled further by London’s Irish population. Not that everyone even in Dublin will be cheering them on, of course. While Rovers’ status as the underdog and fan-led ownership may make them a romantic choice for the neutral, there are plenty within the capital who would just as soon see the perceived bully boys of Irish football getting a taste of their own medicine. Europa League 2011-12 Tottenham Hotspur Shamrock Rovers Europa League Paolo Bandini guardian.co.uk

Posted by on September 29, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.