Maddison enjoys ‘interesting’ Euro away days
Thu 03 October 2024, 13:20|
Tottenham Hotspur
James Maddison already has a healthy amount of European football experience under his belt, but admits he always enjoys the challenge of taking on different teams in different countries.
We’re in Budapest, the capital city of Hungary, for our Europa League matchday two encounter with Ferencvaros this evening (Thursday 3 October, 5.45pm UK time, 6.45pm local time), looking to make it two wins out of two in the competition after last week’s 3-0 home triumph over Qarabag.
For Madders, who played three European campaigns with previous club Leicester City – two in the Europa League and one in the Europa Conference League – it’s always an enjoyable challenge to come up against unfamiliar teams on their own patch.
“The European away games are always nice and, with the new format, we have an extra away game,” he said on SPURSPLAY while surveying the scene at the Groupama Stadium.
“It’s really interesting coming to new cities and the welcome we get is always different, the weather is always different, the stadiums are different, it’s all good experience. Playing weekend-Europe-weekend-Europe, that’s what you want to be doing. It makes the schedule very crammed, not much spare time, but that’s what you want, ultimately, as a player.
“We had a meeting earlier on the team and how they play. They are very dominant here in terms of domestic football, they don’t lose many games and have a great record here. That’s the good thing about Europe – you are always playing teams that are doing well in their league, that’s why they are in Europe. You always play a team that is quite confident, because they normally win at the weekends in their domestic league. These can be tricky places to come. I had a couple of campaigns in the Europa League with Leicester and no away game is easy, it’s always tough and the atmosphere is always amazing. We’re looking forward to the game and imposing our way on it.
“Teams can often come unstuck away from home when they try and set up a little differently. The beauty about us and the way the gaffer wants to play is we don’t do that – we play our way, and that’s it. I love the fact we do that because it means our roles are simple – we’re going to take the game to the opposition, home or away. That makes it clear what we need to do, play attacking football in our structure in our philosophy that we work on all the time in training. Hopefully, it can bring success.”
We’ve gradually built up momentum over the last few weeks with numerous players shining on an individual level. Brennan Johnson has four goals in four, new signing Dominic Solanke has three in three, and for Madders, that energy reflects on the whole team.
“The feeling is good, it’s normally good when you win four games in a row, especially off the back of losing the north London derby, which can be quite deflating,” he said. “We bounced back from that really well with a tough win at Coventry, which we had to grind out, and probably didn’t play the best, but those ugly wins where you grind them out can sometimes kick start a nice little run and we have a bit of momentum at the moment, four wins in a row in all competitions and hopefully standing here after the game it will be five.”
