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Football

08th May 2019

Tottenham fans rip into Kieran Trippier after sloppy marking led to Ajax goal

Kieran Trippier is not having his best season at Tottenham, and his poor form continued on Wednesday night when his lax marking led to Ajax's opening goal

Reuben Pinder

In Trippier’s defence, he’s not very good

Tottenham were hoping to put on a repeat of Liverpool’s Tuesday night heroics against Ajax in the second leg of their Champions League semi-final. They were only one goal down. Score early and it’s game on. Unfortunately for Spurs, they got off to the worst possible start, as Ajax captain Matthijs De Ligt headed in from a corner to give double their lead before ten minutes had passed.

The towering centre-back found himself unmarked at the set-piece, which begged the question: how? How does a top level side leave such a threat in so much space at a set-piece? The answer: Kieran Trippier was marking him. The simplest bit of movement from De Ligt allowed him to escape Trippier among the bodies and beat a static Dele Alli to the ball in the air.

Trippier probably shouldn’t be marking De Ligt, it’s a David vs Goliath mismatch in terms of physicality, but the right-back still took a lot of stick from Tottenham fans after the goal.

https://twitter.com/illsaaaa/status/1126204980803919873

Ajax then doubled their lead through Hakim Ziyech, who buried a cut back from Dusan Tadić with devastating whip.

Game over before the break.