Top 10 iconic Tottenham Hotspur games of the decade (2010-2019)

#2 Tottenham Hotspur 3-1 Inter Milan, Champions League – 2 November, 2010

Gareth Bale dismantled Inter Milan in a 2010 Champions League match

Tottenham’s first Champions League adventure – in the 2010-11 edition of Europe’s greatest competition – ended in the quarter-finals at the hands of Real Madrid, but not after they’d produced a handful of classic performances, most notably this group stage defeat of holders Inter Milan.

The first meeting between the two sides had seen Harry Redknapp’s side beaten 4-3 at the San Siro, but in reality it was almost a moral victory for Spurs; Inter had gone into a 3-0 lead in the first 15 games and Tottenham also saw their goalkeeper sent off before going in 4 goals down at half time, but the second half saw Gareth Bale destroy Inter’s Brazilian right-back Maicon and score a hat-trick to give the Italians a mighty scare.

In the return match at White Hart Lane, Bale continued his one-man torture of the Brazilian, running him ragged and as an Italian media outlet put it, “reducing him to asphalt”. Bale didn’t score in the game, but assisted for Rafael Van Der Vaart, Peter Crouch and Roman Pavlyuchenko, inspiring Tottenham to a stirring 3-1 victory that cemented them as a side to watch on the European stage.

This was the game, more than any other, that turned Bale into a world-renowned superstar, and it took the best part of a decade for Spurs to better this result in European competition.