Tottenham Hotspur believed they had secured an early breakthrough against Eintracht Frankfurt in the Champions League on Wednesday night when Xavi Simons tapped home from close range, but VAR quickly intervened to rule the goal out.<\/p>\n
Former Spurs midfielder Glenn Hoddle later explained why Simons\u2019 effort was disallowed, just minutes into the contest at Deutsche Bank Park. The Dutchman reacted fastest to a rebound after Destiny Udogie\u2019s initial shot was saved, firing the ball into the net inside two minutes.<\/p>\n
However, celebrations among the away supporters were cut short as officials reviewed the build-up to the goal. Following a VAR check, Udogie was judged to have been offside during his run behind Frankfurt\u2019s defence, leading referee Jesus Gil Manzano to award a free-kick to the hosts.<\/p>\n
Hoddle, speaking on TNT Sports commentary, was quick to share his interpretation of the decision. \u201cI think they\u2019re saying it was a foul,\u201d he said. \u201cHe [Thomas Frank] hasn\u2019t seen the foul, but it was a foul. He was interfering with play.\u201d<\/p>\n
The incident comes at a testing time for Frank, who is under growing pressure to spark an upturn in form at Spurs amid mounting fan frustration over poor domestic results.<\/p>\n
While Tottenham entered the clash sitting fifth in the Champions League table, their Premier League campaign tells a very different story, with the north London side currently struggling down in 14th place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tottenham Hotspur believed they had secured an early breakthrough against Eintracht Frankfurt in the Champions League on Wednesday night when Xavi Simons tapped home from close range, but VAR quickly intervened to rule the goal out. Former Spurs midfielder Glenn Hoddle later explained why Simons\u2019 effort was disallowed, just minutes into the contest at Deutsche …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":58018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_1616.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58150,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58149\/revisions\/58150"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/58018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}