Five minutes of added time had been played in a crazily beautiful game that had already swung one way and then another when Dejan Kulusevski cut in from the right at the Etihad Stadium and drifted a languid cross into the Manchester City area. Harry Kane was waiting there.
Harry Kane, who City had tried to buy four times last summer. Harry Kane, who had risked his popularity with the Spurs fans who adore him, by suggesting, as boldly as he dare, that he wanted to join Pep Guardiola’s champions. Harry Kane, who has never quite seemed the same since then.
Kyle Walker was marking Kane but Kane, who had played brilliantly all evening, reacted before him. He edged ahead of Walker. Only just. But enough. As the ball dropped, he got his head to it first and nodded it back across goal. It bounced as City’s keeper, Ederson, watched it helplessly. And then it nestled in the back of the net. And then there was bedlam.
Harry Kane led Tottenham to a 3-2 victory over Premier League leaders Manchester City, scoring an injury-time header
91 MINUTES: Referee Anthony Tayler checks the monitor for a handball by Cristian Romero, later pointing to the penalty spot
92 MINUTES: Riyad Mahrez sweeps the ball past Hugo Lloris to draw City level, setting up a frantic surge for a later winner
95 MINUTES: Dejan Kulusevski swings in a cross from the right and Kane holds off Kyle Walker to head in a shock winner
Spurs were 3-2 up and Kane knew the game was won. He ran to the Spurs fans who were massed behind the goal and lost himself in the moment. The last time Spurs played City, on the opening day of the season, Kane was absent as the wrangling over his move to City played out. Back then, Spurs fans sang ‘are you watching Harry Kane’ with anger in their hearts.
Now, he stood before them and they acclaimed him with all that their hoarse voices could muster. ‘He’s one of our own,’ they yelled with all their might. ‘He’s one of our own, Harry Kane, he’s one of our own.’ Kane drank it all in. It was as if had been reborn. Son Heung-min stood beside him, pointing at the badge on Kane’s shirt. Football is football and we should be used to the magic it conjures and the stories it tells but this was quite a night.
It was a night that may have made Guardiola wonder anew whether City should have met the £150m asking price for Kane in the summer even though this was, by a distance, the best he has played since before the Euros last summer. It is not as if City have suffered for his absence so far this season and they are so good that it is rare they covet opposition players but they must have wished Kane was in their ranks now. If they have a weakness, it is that they do not possess an out and out goalscorer of his quality.
It has not cost them so far but for the first time in a long time, they will be looking over their shoulders this morning. They are six points ahead of Liverpool, who beat Norwich yesterday, but Liverpool have a game in hand and City and Liverpool still have to play each other in April. Apart from everything else it gave us, this was also the game that breathed life back into the title race.
Defeat cuts Manchester City’s lead atop the division to six points, handing Liverpool a route back into the fight for the title
Antonio Conte’s side gave a huge boost to their hopes of sealing a Champions League qualification for next season with a win
Spurs had started the match in eighth place, 27 points behind City and having lost their last three to Southampton, Wolves and Chelsea. City had won 14 of their last 15 games and had not lost since a defeat to Crystal Palace in October. Nobody could have predicted what happened here. That was just one of the things that made it such a bewitching match.
The build-up to the game had been dominated by Tottenham’s recent run of poor form and competing interpretations of Antonio Conte’s comments about his team’s business in the January transfer window. Conte denied he had been complaining when he pointed out he had lost four players in the window and gained only two.
The argument quickly became bogged down in semantics and a debate about quality versus quantity. Is one Dejan Kulusevski worth two Dele Allis? Is one Rodrigo Bentancur worth two Tanguy Ndombeles? Was Giovani Lo Celso really an ‘important’ player to Spurs, as Conte had claimed?
When Conte’s words had been dissected enough, some hard facts remained: Spurs went into the game trying to avoid losing four successive Premier League games for the first time since a run of six defeats between October and November 2004. The facts also showed they had conceded seven goals in their previous three league games, one more than they did in their first nine under Conte.
And so it was against a backdrop of general astonishment that Spurs took the lead inside the first four minutes. The ball was played out of the visitors’ defence to Kane and he played a fine first time pass to Son, who was just inside the City half but was being played onside by Ruben Dias.
Dejan Kulusevski made his first start in a Tottenham shirt and bagged his first victory after two-straight defeat so far
The striker on-loan from Juventus scored just four minutes into his first Premiership start, sweeping home a Spurs counter
Spurs created chance after chance with total control of possession but Tottenham continued to look dangerous on the break
Son set off for goal but as Ederson came out to meet him, Son chose the unselfish option and squared the ball to Kulusevski. Kulusevski took it first time and slid the ball unerringly between the legs of Joao Cancelo and into the unguarded City net.
Cancelo came close to scoring what would have been a sublime equaliser when he jinked inside one challenge on the edge of the Spurs box, sat Emerson Royal down with a feint inside and then hit a curling shot that seemed like it was about to bulge the net but flew just wide of the far post.
City started to pile on the pressure. Midway through the half, Raheem Sterling ran at the retreating Spurs defence and played the ball inside to Ilkay Gundogan. Gundogan turned brilliantly and curled in an improvised shot that beat Hugo Lloris in the Spurs goal but cannoned away to safety off the outside of the post.
There was an inevitability about a City equaliser and it came ten minutes before half time. Sterling sent a difficult, curling cross to the near post, hit with pace and swerve. Lloris dived to claim it but, under pressure from Kevin de Bruyne, he spilled it and the ball fell to Gundogan, who clipped it past the goalkeeper and into the corner of the net.
Spurs managed only occasional adventures into the City half. Like sailors on shore leave, they tried to make the most of it when the opportunity arose but the truth was that, as usual, they were over-reliant on the brilliant interplay between Kane and Son. Kane set Son free again ten minutes after the interval and he found space for a shot but Ederson dived low to his right to save comfortably.
City kept pushing until their pressure broke Hugo Lloris, who spilled to allow Ilkay Gundogan to level the scored 31 minutes in
The German midfielder was on hand to sweep in the rebound and City kept the pressure on Spurs, but couldn’t go ahead
Kane nipped between the City centre-backs to score Spurs’ second, picked out expertly by his strike-partner Heung-min Son
But just before the hour, Son and Kane combined again and this time, City could not deny them. Spurs broke from deep in their own half and a weak header from Dias fell to Son on the left of the City area. Son looked up and spotted the run of Kane into the box. His cross fell perfectly for Kane, who opened up his body and, with a caressed half-volley, steered the ball high into the roof of the net.
A few minutes later, they nearly worked their magic again. Again, Son was the provider, this time sliding a pass into Kane, who had ghosted in between two defenders in the City box. Kane took the pass in his stride and tried to clip the ball past Ederson but his shot was too close to the City keeper and he blocked it with his outstretched left boot. It should have been 3-1.
City thought they had equalised when Phil Foden played the ball back to Gundogan on the edge of the Spurs box and Gundogan curled a deliciously shaped shot towards the top corner of the goal. City fans were already celebrating when Lloris redeemed his earlier error by hurling himself to his left and getting a strong enough left hand on the ball to push it wide.
Kane seemed to have put the game out of City’s reach inside the last 20 minutes when Kulusevki’s deflected shot found him and he swivelled to drill a drive past Ederson. But VAR showed that Kulusevski had drifted marginally offside when he received the ball in the build-up to the goal and referee Anthony Taylor ruled the strike out.
City gave Spurs a tough time defending their lead but the north Londoners were setup perfectly to counteract the champions
Kane put on a stunning display after a rocky campaign to lead Spurs to victory. He may have hit form just in time for Conte
Spurs seemed to have clung on to their lead and the match was edging towards added time when VAR intervened again. Bernardo Silva, who had had a quiet match by his recent exalted standards, smashed a cross into the area, and as Cristian Romero flung himself at it, he seemed to move his hand towards it, either to protect himself or to beat the ball away.
When the referee ran to the side of the pitch to look at the replay, the whole stadium knew what was coming next. Mr Taylor pointed to the penalty spot and second half substitute Riyad Mahrez placed the ball on the spot. He smashed it high into the roof of the net. It was beyond the reach of any goalkeeper.
But there were seven minutes of added time and football is football and Kulusevski broke again down the left and crossed again and Kane was there again. This time, he got in front of Kyle Walker and nodded the ball back across the face of the goal and past Ederson until it nestled in the corner of the net.