Tottenham Hotspur Women equalized on a last-minute penalty to send their FA Cup tie with London City Lionesses into extra time and penalty kicks. After eight successful kicks a piece, Lize Kop saved Wassa Sangaré’s penalty, ensuring Spurs their place in the next round of the FA Cup.
Martin Ho made a few changes from recent lineups — Molly Bartrip came in for Clare Hunt (who had already departed to represent Australia at the Asian Cup), and Tinka Tandberg got the start over Beth England.
Tragically,
this game was not televised in the United States. If you’re curious about what went down, you can check out some extended highlights here, although these admittedly don’t show much of what was going on in the center of the pitch. But this was the general idea – Matilda Vinberg opened the scoring in the 7th minute with a toe-poked goal, following excellent work by Tinka Tandberg and Olivia Holdt to set her up.
The rest of the half played out largely equally, but London City really dominated the second half. They scored two goals in quick succession in the 58th and 59th minute to take the lead. The first was a repeat of a goal we’ve witnessed many times this season – a speedy winger got the better of one of our fullbacks and crossed to the center, where an unmarked attacker stood waiting to put the shot away. Their second was a once-in-a-season banger from 35 yards that nobody seemed to be prepared for. Lize Kop had an excellent match and kept us in the game for much of the second half, but I’d say her positioning may have allowed this shot to begin with.
It seemed Spurs were destined for a disappointing exit, but a last-minute set piece caused an attacking flurry, and in the midst of it all, Teyah Goldie put her arm up to seemingly intentionally deny a clear goalscoring opportunity. Beth England made no mistake with the penalty, and sent the game into extra time.
Both sides had good chances to find the winner in extra time, but neither did. In the end, it went to penalties. Spurs and London City took and scored eight quality penalties a piece, including one by Lize Kop herself, who is starting to make a habit out of scoring in penalty shootouts (she also scored one in our cup game against Aston Villa in the fall). Lize ultimately proved the hero, getting a palm to Wassa Sangaré’s penalty to deny her. The team rushed her, except for Spurs fan Tinka Tandberg, who charged into the stands to celebrate with the fans.
Thoughts
Despite sacking their very good manager and going on a less-than-stellar run of form, London City Lionesses are still very good, and they still have some real stars in their ranks. I expected to struggle with their wingers and the rest of their attack, and despite our newfound scoring boots against Aston Villa, I thought we might struggle to string together attacks. That last bit didn’t really prove out – we seemed perfectly capable of creating chances (especially in the first half), but struggled to put them away. Luckily, we created enough to cancel out what London City managed to put past Lize Kop.
It was a bit of a return to earth after the screaming highs of Aston Villa, but we did enough to get by against an equal team and that’s promising! For our troubles, we’ve secured the opportunity to face Chelsea in April in the quarter finals. This is… not the draw I would’ve hoped for, but I suppose stranger things have happened. Who knows what kind of shape and form either squad will be in by then.
The teams have now gone off to international break, and Spurs won’t play again until March 15th. This is one of the strange things about the WSL – if you’re not in the Champions League and you make an early exit from one of the cups, you can end up with long stretches of no games. I’ll be here providing international break updates in the meantime, and looking forward to our return to action against Everton on March 15th.
