Tottenham’s first Champions League campaign in three years starts with a tricky-looking home tie against Villarreal.
By Ian King
Early season form
In comparison with last season’s slow motion car crash, Spurs have started their 2025/26 Premier League season in reasonably fine fettle. Three convincing wins – all of which featured a clean sheet – out of four leave them third in the table behind Liverpool and Arsenal, and looking like a team that might even be capable of doing something this season.
Villarreal started excellently in LaLiga, with two wins against Real Oviedo and Girona, but have slowed since then, with a draw against Celta de Vigo and a 2-0 defeat away to Atlético Madrid last weekend. They’re currently fifth in the table, which is exactly where they ended last season.
History
These two clubs have never met before in European competition, even though they’ve both been mainstays of European football for many years. The only time they have met previously came at the end of July 2010, when Villareal won 4-1 in a friendly match at White Hart Lane, a match in which Giuseppe Rossi scored a hat-trick for the visitors.
Key Players
There is one player in the Villareal team who Spurs fans will be keeping an extra eye on. Manor Solomon is a Spurs player, but he signed a season-long loan with Villareal on transfer deadline day and is eligible to play against his former club. If he’s got a point to prove to his employers, this particular evening would be both an excellent and the worst possible time to do so.
Spurs’ improved performances this season have largely been about more cohesive team performances than any particular individual player standing out. Their startling piece of deadline day excitement was bringing in Xavi Simons from PSG.
He made an encouraging start with his performance in their demolition of West Ham at the weekend, but you do get the feeling that he’s been signed with this competition in mind; his performance on Saturday indicated that there could be a lot to look forward to from him this season.
Team News
Yves Bissouma, Kota Takai, Dejan Kulusevski, Radu Drăgușin and v will all be missing for Spurs, while Mathys Tel didn’t make the Champions League squad because the club somehow overlooked having enough ‘homegrown’ players. There are, as ever, injury concerns hanging over Dominic Solanke. He could be on the bench for this one, but it’s doubtful that he’ll start.
Willy Kambwala, Logan Costa and Pau Cabanes are all confirmed Villa real absentees, while it remains doubtful that Gerard Moreno will start for them on account of a hamstring injury.
Prediction
With only one goal conceded in their first three Premier League matches of the season, the defining characteristic of 2025-26 Spurs is that Thomas Frank has got them playing like a coherent football team again. Much as everybody at Spurs loved Ange Postecoglou, what we’ve all seen so far this season has been a substantial improvement on his team.
Villarreal are old pros of the European club game and, like Spurs, have a Europa League title to their name, having won it in 2021. But their start to the season has been slightly patchier than their hosts’, and this match will provide a lot of insight into how the progress being made under Frank is going.
Spurs are in marginally better form, so I’m going for a narrow 2-1 win, but if they get it wrong, well, at least the seven games they have left afterwards gives them a chance to set themselves back on course again. They should have enough about them to get through this one, though it could be tight.
(Cover image from IMAGO)
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