When Cristian Romero leads Tottenham Hotspur out in Udine on Wednesday evening, he will be taking them into uncharted territory.
Spurs have never previously played in the UEFA Super Cup, the glamorous opening night of the European club season. This is by definition an elite event, an invitation-only high-rollers’ table. UEFA does not just let anyone in behind the velvet rope. You have to look like you belong there.
And when Spurs emerge from the tunnel at the Stadio Friuli, they may be briefly dazzled by the shine of silver. They will see the Europa League trophy that they won in May, their buy-in for this game. They will see the Super Cup trophy, the pot they are going for on the night. And the Champions League trophy too, that Paris Saint-Germain brought with them. Tottenham will be competing for that over the course of this season, aiming to make it to Budapest almost 10 months from now to win it for themselves.
During every game that Tottenham play in the Champions League this season — and there will be eight at least — they will have a badge on the right sleeve of their shirt, one that will be seen for the first time on their all-white kit on Wednesday. UEFA calls it the ‘Europa League titleholder badge’ and it will remind the world of what Tottenham achieved in Bilbao and why they are playing these games.
Spurs will battle PSG for the UEFA Super Cup on Wednesday evening (Tullio Puglia/Getty Images)
So Wednesday is in one sense part of the spoils of victory, the rewards for beating Manchester United in that famous final. No one can argue against the notion that they deserve to be there. But in another sense, this is a test. Spurs are right back among the elite here, facing the best team in the world. This is going to be a severe test of their credentials. And while deserving to be invited there is one thing, belonging at the top table is quite another.
For an occasion like this, you want to arrive looking your best. But the problem for Spurs is they will have to field a team some way short of the level fans would want from them this year. Their two best creative midfielders, James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski, are both out. They have not signed a No 10 to replace them. Their move for Morgan Gibbs-White stalled in July, and supporters were left frustrated at the failure to move on to other targets.
While Mohammed Kudus and Joao Palhinha are both good additions, Spurs clearly still need more, and the mood of the fanbase has returned to being negative. Combine this with Son Heung-min’s departure and the Tottenham team that takes the field will not exactly look intimidating on paper. Certainly compared to Spurs teams of the recent past, who would go into big European games with Son and Harry Kane up front. If Thomas Frank’s side are to get a result on Wednesday, they will have to be canny, resourceful and imaginative. They cannot just rely on individual qualities any more.
It makes you think about how Spurs will compete with teams like PSG this season. For years this has been one of the great unanswered questions about Tottenham Hotspur: are they a truly elite club? Is this their genuine level, competing with the richest and best teams in the world, for the biggest trophies?
Some would argue that they are now among the giants of the world game. They certainly have some strong reasons to be bracketed there. The stadium, home to NFL and Beyonce. The training ground, one of the best in Europe. The global fanbase, with Spurs especially popular in the U.S. and in south-east Asia. The proud history, taking in some of the true greats of the game. The assortment of brilliant players and managers they have had in more recent years. When the European Super League was briefly proposed in April 2021, Tottenham had a seat at the table, not that the club likes to sing proudly about that now.
On the other side of the argument, you have heard it all before. People might point to the relative dearth of major trophies, the 17-year gap between the 2008 League Cup and the 2025 Europa League, the fact that their last league title was in 1961.
Perhaps the biggest issue, the biggest question regarding whether Tottenham fit in at the very top, concerns the last few years in the Champions League. When Spurs reached the final in Madrid in 2019 it felt like one of the great moments in the club’s modern history. Especially coming less than two months after the opening of the new stadium. It felt for a short while as if Tottenham was now the centre of the football world. You could see the 2020s rolling out in front of you, Spurs constantly hosting Champions League games in their new home. Their elite status would be unambiguous.
The reality has been different. Tottenham’s impact on the Champions League since the 2019 final in Madrid has been negligible at best. They have had two campaigns after the 2019 final, not including the one that starts next month. Both of those have been utterly forgettable. Both times they have limped out in the last-16 stage, against RB Leipzig in 2020 and Milan in 2023. There has been almost nothing happy or memorable or even interesting about any of it. The sad truth about these last two Champions League campaigns is that the single most memorable game was losing 7-2 at home to Bayern Munich, in the dying days of the Mauricio Pochettino era.
Spurs meekly exited the 2022-23 Champions League to Milan (Rob Newell/Getty Images)
And over the course of those years, whether outside of the Champions League, or doing nothing in it, Spurs started to lose some of that status they built at the end of the last decade. They started to look further away again from the level they always aspired to. In the 2023-24 campaign, they did not play any European football at all. There is nothing that bruises the ego of any club quite like a season of midweeks spent at home watching European football on TV. Even the Europa Conference League starts to look exotic and glamorous after a while.
One of the many good things about Spurs winning the Europa League is that they do not have to worry about the long slog of the Conference League or Europa League this year. They are straight back into the Champions League, for the first time since the final days of the Antonio Conte era. If the end of last season is anything to go by, they may face some carping about whether they deserve their place there, whether winning the Europa League justifies their place.
This is why Wednesday’s game could be so important. It is not that Tottenham need to bring this trophy back to north London. Spurs have never even played for this particular one before. And this club has lasted 143 years already without ever holding onto the Super Cup. Whatever happens in Udine, Burnley on Saturday afternoon will become the dominant question soon enough.
What might matter more than the trophy itself is the ego boost that would come from victory. All of the questions about whether Tottenham deserve to be here in the VIP section, deserve to be back in the Champions League, would be silenced in an instant. All they have to do is go out and beat the best team in the world.
It is a big ask for any side. Especially for a Spurs side playing their first competitive game under a new manager, who for all his many strengths has little experience at the top end of the European game. And for a Spurs side who have only added two players to the first 11 this window, while selling Son and losing Maddison to a knee injury. This is arguably now the Spurs side with the least star quality in for a generation.
The danger is that they show up to Udine looking short on quality, short on nous, short on everything you would expect from a team who knows what it takes at this level. They will just have to find a way to stay in the game, to keep it tight, to prove that they belong at this top table after all. That could even be a bigger prize than a trophy at the end.
(Top photo: Valerio Pennicino/UEFA via Getty Images)