New teams and familiar faces make up our eight opponents in the League Phase of this season’s UEFA Champions League following Thursday afternoon’s draw.
Spanish side Villarreal and Danish champions FC Copenhagen will both visit N17 having never faced us before in competitive action, while we will also cross swords with three teams we’ve met within the last four months in the form of PSG, Bodo/Glimt and Eintracht Frankfurt. Let’s take a look at our previous encounters against our eight opponents...
Villarreal
Although we’ve never played competitively, our one and only previous game against Villarreal came in a pre-season friendly at White Hart Lane in July, 2010, losing 4-1 with Giovani Dos Santos scoring our goal.
Paris Saint-Germain
We don’t have to go too far back for our one and only competitive clash with European Champions PSG. That, of course, came in the UEFA Super Cup in Udine just over two weeks ago in Thomas Frank’s first competitive game as our new Head Coach. Micky van de Ven and Cristian Romero put us 2-0 up before the French side rallied late on to level it up through Kang-In Lee and Goncalo Ramos, and they went on to win the trophy 4-3 on penalties.
Eintracht Frankfurt
The round before that, it was another impressive away win that saw us progress past Frankfurt, Dominic Solanke’s penalty giving us a 1-0 win at Deutsche Bank Park after a 1-1 draw in N17. This will be the fourth time we have faced the German side in Euro action. In Group D of the Champions League in 2022/23, we drew 0-0 away before Heung-Min Son (2) and Harry Kane scored in a 3-2 victory on home soil, while we knocked them out of the third round of the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1981/82, winning 2-0 at the Lane before a 2-1 defeat in Frankfurt.
Borussia Dortmund
Another German side also awaits us in this season’s League Phase. Borussia Dortmund were confirmed as our first opponents in Thursday’s draw and we’ll face them again in N17 having previously played them six times in competitive games. We lost both legs of our round of 16 tie in the Europa League in 2015/16, going down 3-0 in Germany and 2-1 in London. But we won the remaining four meetings. Son and Kane did the damage in two Champions League Group H matches in 2017/18, scoring all five goals (Kane 3, Son 2) as we won 3-1 at Wembley and 2-1 at Signal Iduna Park, before an excellent 4-0 aggregate success in the round of 16 the following season. Back at Wembley again, Son, Jan Vertonghen and Fernando Llorente scored, with Kane netting the only goal of the game in the return.
Slavia Prague
Our remaining two opponents in the League Phase are Slavia Prague, who we play at home, and Monaco, who we face away. On our return to European football in 2006/07 after a seven-year hiatus, Czech outfit Slavia were our first opponents in the first round of the UEFA Cup. Jermaine Jenas scored in Prague and Robbie Keane in London as we edged both matches 1-0. The following season, we were drawn together again, this time in the third round. A 2-1 victory in the Czech capital thanks to goals from Dimitar Berbatov and Keane was followed by a 1-1 draw in the return leg, with Jamie O’Hara on target as we progressed 3-2 on aggregate.
Monaco
Finally, we’ve faced Ligue 1 side Monaco on four occasions in Europe. Back in 2015/16, Erik Lamela scored our goal in a 1-1 draw in the south of France in Group J of the Europa League, before a convincing 4-1 win in N17, Lamela this time with a hat-trick and Tom Carroll also on target. Once more, we met again the following campaign, this time in the Champions League group stage. In what was our first-ever European fixture at Wembley Stadium, Monaco won 2-1 with Toby Alderweireld on target for us in front of over 85,000 fans, while we also lost 2-1 in the away fixture, Harry Kane scoring from the penalty spot.