Vitesse Arnhem 1-0 Tottenham: Wittek sinks underpowered, underwhelming Spurs in Europa Conference League

AP
Marc Mayo21 October 2021

Tottenham suffered a blow in their quest for the Europa Conference League trophy after Maximilian Wittek earned Vitesse Arnhem a 1-0 win on Thursday.

With the 11 players who started against Newcastle left at home, a reserve XI took to the field at a noisy, packed GelreDome that clearly wanted it more than the visitors.

Spurs lacked serious link-up play for much of the first-half and failed to deliver any end product when they found themselves in good positions.

Meanwhile, Vitesse were confident in defence and had plenty of threat going forward, Nikolai Baden Frederiksen breaking free to test Pierluigi Gollini in the opening minutes and Jacob Rasmussen going close with a neat flicked header from a corner.

Nuno Espirito Santo evidently got in his players’ ear at half-time as Bryan Gil wrapped a sweetly-hit effort from 20 yards against the crossbar moments after the restart.

With the tempo upped by at least a notch or two, Spurs showed that they clearly had it in them to unlock the Vitesse defence.

Yet Steven Bergwijn, built up before the game, was guilty of wasting opportunities with multiple counter-attacks going to waste. Giovani Lo Celso and young forward Dane Scarlett were also guilty of lacking any end product.

Sensing the lack of threat from the Premier League team, Vitesse pushed forward and were rewarded through Wittek’s fabulous connection with Eli Dasa’s smart cross to the edge of the area.

The strike was enough to win the game and send the Dutch fans into raptures, underlining how Vitesse simply wanted it more.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in