Humiliation for Kinsky as Tottenham crumble early in thrashing by Atlético Madrid

Things can always get worse. Much, much worse. If there is a place below rock bottom, Tottenham seem determined to go there. The Champions League may not be a priority, Igor Tudor publicly declaring survival their concern, but that didn’t make it any less painful, nor easier to forget. Instead, this will linger. It wasn’t even the 5-2 defeat that hurt, not really, and it certainly wasn’t their now inevitable exit from Europe: it was how it happened, the opening period here quite possibly the stupidest, most absurd, most astonishing minutes of football you have ever seen.

If, that is, you can really call it football; this was a dramatic act of self-destruction that ‘Spursy’ doesn’t get anywhere near, the final ridiculous scene of a tragedy, the ultimate humiliation. Only, terrifyingly, that may still be to come, because if the Metropolitano was a testing ground for the fight against relegation, as the manager said, the conclusion can only be that they are horribly ill-equipped to escape the abyss. This was both deeply comic and also desperately sad, especially when poor Antonin Kinsky departed down the tunnel, broken, substituted on 17 minutes having gifted two of the three goals Atlético Madrid had already scored.

Micky van de Ven had handed over the other and no sooner had Guglielmo Vicario come on to replace the Czech keeper than he conceded too, Spurs again complicit in their own demise: a Pape Sarr header towards his own goal led to the fourth. Pedro Porro made it 4-1 before half time but there was no way back from this – not now, not ever – with goals from Julián Alvarez and Dominic Solanke completing the scoring on the night Tottenham returned to the scene of the 2019 Champions League final, watched by Mauricio Pochettino. A reminder, tinged with regret, that they were good once. They are not now.

Tudor had said Tottenham have problems in defence, midfield and attack, which sounded pretty comprehensive but still he managed to fall as short in his analysis as he has in his attempts to do anything about their crisis.

Plenty had already concluded that he could add “in goal” to that but even the most pessimistic, which is most people at Spurs, could not have imagined anything like this, an opening beyond comprehension.

With Vicario left out, Kinsky replaced him and was so painfully bad, so deeply affected by his decisive role in Spurs’s demise, that Tudor swapped them over again after little more than a quarter of an hour.

Not that it was just him, Spurs falling apart from the start. A wasted long throw on one minute, a yellow card on three and a Ademola Lookman chance on four were the prelude for a fifth minute goal that could be accompanied by a kazoo and the crash of cymbals. Cristian Romero’s short goal kick left Kinsky swinging his leg, slipping, falling and sending the ball to Lookman who found Alvarez to set up Marcos Llorente.

Julián Alvarez scores Atlético’s third goal after another Antonin Kinsky error. Photograph: Violeta Santos Moura/Reuters

It was the kind of moment that inspires a million memes, and they quickly multiplied. The second goal as bad, Van de Ven’s turn to hear a clattering soundtrack, and the third was worse yet. On 13 minutes, after Djed Spence and Mathys Tel failed to deal with a ball up the right, Van de Ven fell over, allowing Antoine Griezmann to run through and score. And just two minutes later, the Dutchman played the ball to Kinsky who managed to kick it off his own leg and leave Alvarez an open goal. Fifteen minutes in, three calamitous errors and the game was gone. So too was the goalkeeper.

Tudor took Kinsky off. Two members of staff went with him, an arm on each shoulder. They were soon followed by Conor Gallagher, Solanke, and João Palhinha, aware that this was a moment a player might never recover from.

Heading the other way was Vicario, who almost immediately made an exceptional save – from his own player. Sarr hadn’t just deflected a free kick towards his own goal, either; he actually headed it. And, as the ball came off the keeper’s gloves, Robin Le Normand nudged it over the line.

Still this wildness went on. Porro dashed through to make it 4-1 on 25. Jan Oblak saved from Richarlison and Romero hit the post. At the other end, Vicario saved from Lookman, Van de Ven might have been sent off for a second time in six days – the referee took pity – and Llorente shot wide.

The next glimpse of some tiny reaction from Spurs, nine minutes into the second half, was eclipsed immediately. From the moment Oblak stopped Richarlison’s diving header for 4-2 to Alvarez running onto Griezmann’s glorious touch to slot past Vicario for 5-1, just twelve seconds had past.

The temptation might have been to call Solanke’s subsequent high finish a consolation but there was none. Instead, in the dying minutes of this whole daft drama there was yet another a scene to sum Spurs up, João Palhinha and Romero crashing into each other and left lying knocked out on the turf, a picture of their pitiful self-destruction.