Classic Matches: The Battle of Stamford Bridge
We recently took a trip back to 2016, for our Unexpected Winners series, to look at Leicester’s remarkable Premier League triumph, but the game that clinched them the title was equally memorable for a number of reasons.
The Foxes had spent most of the season battling with the two North London rivals, Tottenham and Arsenal, for dominance at the top of the league but the Gunners fell away and with only 3 games remaining, Leicester needed just 3 points to clinch their first Premier League title.
The East Midlands side picked up a huge point away at Old Trafford to leave themselves with an 8 point lead ahead of Spurs’ Monday night clash with their fierce London rivals, Chelsea. Tottenham had always been bigger than Chelsea as a club until the turn of the millennium when Roman Abramovich arrived and pumped money into the Blues.
Since then, the West London club have dominated Spurs but in 2016 there was a big chance to change that. Mauricio Pochettino’s men had a chance to win the club’s first top flight title since 1961 but to do it they would have to win all of their last 3 games and hope that Leicester slipped up. The draw with Man United was enough to give them hope that they could pull of a great heist for the title and it started magically at Stamford Bridge.
Spurs’ dynamic duo Harry Kane and Son Heung-Min had put Tottenham 2-0 at half time with Chelsea continuing their miserable title defence as a mid table team. However, there had been rumblings in the first half that the game could turn into more of an MMA bout than a football match. Erik Lamela had clashed a few times with Cesc Fabregas and both Mousa Dembele and Danny Rose were looking increasingly tetchy with latter having to be separated from Willian by Pochettino. Dembele had also been lucky to get away with an eye gouge on Diego Costa with Spurs having 2 goals, 3 yellow cards and a lucky escape from a red at the break.
Their intensity had served them well in the first 45 minutes but as soon as Gary Cahill pulled back a goal for Chelsea, the game started to get out of hand and Costa began to relish his role as pantomime villain. Lamela pulled off a shocking tackle on Fabregas to earn a yellow and was lucky to escape a second when he stamped on his hand a few minutes later.
Then with seven minutes of normal time remaining, Eden Hazard levelled the scores with an excellent curling finish and Tottenham preceded to completely lose their composure. Dembele, Kane and Mason all got yellow cards in injury time and Eric Dier miraculously escaped a second yellow after another horror tackle on Fabregas. Mark Clattenburg who had refereed the match later admitted that he was happy to let Spurs implode hence the lack of red cards in the game.
After the final whistle had gone and Tottenham’s title challenge was officially over, tempers began to boil over again with Danny Rose, Michel Vorm and Jan Vertonghen all teaming up on Costa and causing a full on scrum just outside the tunnel.
The dirty nature of the game led to many fans dubbing it ‘The Battle of Stamford Bridge’ and Spurs made sure it had its place in the record books as well, setting a new record for the most yellow cards in a Premier League game by a single team with 9.
It’s a game that will be remembered mostly for Leicester clinching the title but the actual match itself didn’t disappoint and deserves it’s own place in history.