Thomas Frank acknowledged his “special operation” failed but felt pride in his players after Tottenham surrendered a two-goal lead to lose the Super Cup on penalties to Paris St Germain.
Set-piece goals by Micky van de Ven and Cristian Romero had Spurs halfway towards another trophy – only three months on from Frank’s predecessor Ange Postecoglou clinching Europa League success in May.
Champions League winners PSG, who only returned to pre-season last week following their Club World Cup exploits in July, fought back impressively – with substitute Kang-in Lee pulling one back with five minutes left before Goncalo Ramos grabbed an equaliser in the fourth-minute of stoppage-time.
It was initially advantage Tottenham in the shoot-out when Vitinha missed PSG’s first kick and Rodrigo Bentancur put the Premier League club two up, but it was followed by Van de Ven and Mathys Tel failing to score as Frank’s competitive debut ended in a 4-3 shoot-out defeat after a 2-2 draw.
The Danish coach paid tribute to his squad after he lined them up in a back-three formation to largely good effect, in a fixture where they constantly looked a threat at set-pieces.
“Very, very proud of the players, the team, the club, the fans,” Frank reflected.
“I think the players gave everything, playing against one of the best teams in the world, maybe the best at the moment and I think we were 75, 80 minutes perfect. Almost giving nothing away.
“I knew we had to do something a little bit different against PSG. It was a special operation. In medical terms, the operation succeeded but the patient died, so not that good in the end.
“But we worked on a gameplan that was a little bit different and very close to succeeding.
“It was a little bit of special operation because it clearly went in spells a little bit more direct, because we knew that we could hurt them there. Big, big focus on the set pieces, from all areas of the pitch, but we will have focus on set pieces no matter what.”
Frank’s game-plan had worked perfectly until the 85th minute – with Van de Ven’s opener just reward for a disciplined and dynamic Tottenham first-half display.
Romero’s header from Pedro Porro’s free kick three minutes after the break had Spurs fans in dreamland, which remained the case as they put bodies on the line to thwart PSG until a raft of substitutes by Luis Enrique helped tip the scales.
New Tottenham boss Frank promised to swiftly lift morale before Saturday’s Premier League opener at home to Burnley, adding: “Every game matters.
“I think if you look on the face of the players and all of us, we are hugely disappointed and I have my rule for 24 hours. I can be disappointed for 24 hours.
“We want to compete in a lot of different tournaments and if you want to do that, you need to be ready to do a quick turnaround and go again. I’ll make sure the players are ready and come flying out on Saturday.”
Luis Enrique was honest in his assessment of PSG, who competed in the Club World Cup final exactly a month ago.
“To be honest, I’m not sure we deserved this trophy,” the Spanish coach admitted.
“The difference was stark between Tottenham. They’ve had six weeks of preparation and we’ve had six days.
“It was huge and we were trying to play our football and just couldn’t for the first 80 minutes. We had a lot of poor passes and maybe we were lucky. Lady Luck was smiling on us.”
