Tuesday night's UEFA Champions League encounter represents our seventh against Borussia Dortmund in European competition in the space of 10 years - following 66 years between our first friendly and first competitive match!
We first faced the Bundesliga giants back in 1950 - Dortmund's first match against British opposition. They were still semi-professional, while we'd just lifted the 1949/50 Second Division title - Arthur Rowe's famous 'push and run' team were about to take the top flight by storm and land our first First Division crown in 1950/51.
Almost 70 years after that first meeting, one of our best performances in recent years in Europe, a 3-0 victory against Borussia Dortmund in the first leg of our Champions League quarter-final at Wembley in 2019. We won the return as well - making it four wins on the trot at the moment against Die Schwarzgelben - on our way to reaching the final.
The friendlies
We first faced Borussia Dortmund in the fourth match of our 1950 tour of Germany, having beaten Hannover Arminia, Tennis-Borussia and Wacker Club. We ran out 4-0 winners with Eddie Baily, Len Duquemin, Sonny Walters and Harry Gilberg on target. The second friendly arrived a year later as we hosted Dortmund at White Hart Lane in the Festival of Britain. A closer game this time in Dortmund's first overseas tour, Baily and Peter Murphy saw us home 2-1. After a gap of 55 years, we met Die Schwarzgelben again in a friendly in 2006, this time at their impressive Westfalenstadion, where Dimitar Berbatov's goal secured a 1-1 draw. Two years later, goals from Darren Bent, Jamie O'Hara and Giovani Dos Santos saw us home 3-0 as we won the Feyenoord Jubileum tournament in Rotterdam, Holland.
Results
Superb strikes from Heung-Min Son and Harry Kane gave us the platform to turn the tables on Dortmund in the UCL group stage of 2017/18. Our deadly duo both lashed home from the left angle in a storming first 15 minutes of MD1, where Andriy Yarmolenko also found the top corner for the visitors. Harry then drove home for 3-1 in the second half. In MD5 in Germany, Aubameyang opened the scoring but Harry and Sonny turned it around in the second half as we finished top of a group also including Real Madrid. We went out in the quarter-finals to Juventus.
'Super Jan' tore Borussia Dortmund apart in a memorable UCL Round of 16, first leg at Wembley in 2019. Playing left-back, Jan Vertonghen crossed for Heung-Min Son to open the scoring before volleying home the second himself. Fernando Llorente added the third and a fine display in the second leg in Germany, capped by Harry Kane's winner, saw us through 4-0 on aggregate. Memorable victories on aggregate over Manchester City and Ajax followed before we lost out 2-0 against Liverpool in the final in Madrid.