Uefa Champions League: Monaco, flying high in France and Europe, are ominous opponents for Tottenham

Ian Hawkey profiles the recent success of the Ligue 1 club ahead of their Uefa Champions League match with Tottenham.

Radamel Falcao is enjoying a new lease of life since returning to Monaco from two failed loan moves. Stephane Mahe / Reuters

Monaco, official population: somewhat shy of 40,000. London, at last thorough count, has a number of inhabitants creeping up towards nine million.

Lucky, then, for the Uefa Champions League contenders from the smallest conurbation in the competition that they do not tend to cower in the face of measurements like the size of their support-base or stadium capacity.

And up against clubs from the capital of England, Monaco have a particularly enviable record in football’s leading club tournament, one that would look ominous to Tottenham Hotspur, visitors to the 18,000-seat Stade Louis II on Tuesday evening if they were to dwell too long on it.

It was there, a dozen years ago, that Monaco famously ejected Chelsea from the semi-finals of the Champions League. It was against Monaco, two seasons back, that Arsenal’s run in the competition ended, thanks to a 3-2 aggregate defeat against an unheralded Monaco side in the last 16.

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The Monaco whom Spurs visit on the Cote d’Azur are rather more heralded than those underdogs were, not least because of the emphatic start they have made to both their campaign in Europe, where they lead Group E and need just one point to confirm a place in the knockout phase, and to France’s Ligue 1. They sat top of the table for most of the weekend, up until Nice’s win against Saint-Etienne on Sunday night. They occupy second place ahead of champions Paris Saint-Germain on goal difference.

And nobody is going to be catching Monaco up on goal difference for a while. Friday night’s 3-0 victory over Lorient was just about par as a margin of victory for their domestic season. Monaco have scored 39 goals in their nine Ligue 1 matches. In each of their previous home matches in the league, they scored six times.

This is quite a transformation. Not so long ago, under the same manager, Leonardo Jardim, Monaco had established a reputation as stodgy, defensive, spartan. Dull to watch, in fact. French broadcasters joked that watching Monaco was a cure for insomnia. That was the time when the sneers were suddenly reversed by the 3-1 away win at Arsenal, in February 2015, that Jardim now looks back on as “a significant moment, when our work here became really valued”.

Jardim, appointed in 2014, has dealt with a number of challenges, the first of which was to guide a transition from extravagant recruitment to economic rigour. When he arrived, stars like James Rodriguez — sold to Real Madrid — and Radamel Falcao, loaned to Manchester United — were leaving to ease the strain of a heaving wage bill.

His good luck was that there was talent coming through the ranks, as it traditionally has at a club that has a unique modus operandi, benefiting from its business status in a wealthy, tax-friendly independent Principality, but short of a large local fan-base. But the young talent was also needed to balance to the books: Anthony Martial brought in over €50 million (Dh195m), a sum that may rise, when he joined Manchester United just over a year ago.

Do Monaco miss Martial’s sharpness up front? Apparently not. Falcao is back, after two dreadful years in England, where both United and Chelsea quickly decided not convert his loans into buys, and his fitness — sound — and his form — lethal — will alarm Tottenham.

The Colombian has six goals from his last five games, and scored twice against CSKA Moscow to put Monaco four points clear of third-place Spurs in the group.

Mauricio Pochettino, the Tottenham manager, knows his Londoners are in an awkward spot. By the time they take the field at the Stade Louis II, after the earlier Group E fixture between CSKA and Bayer Leverkusen has finished, Spurs could be bottom on the group.

“It is a game we have to win,” Pochettino said.

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