In the heart of midfield, Clasie will look to dictate play as the former Southampton man proved instrumental last week.

He hadn’t started the weekend loss to Heerenveen prior to the first leg and provided a notable upgrade to get the team ticking against Spurs with his short, crisp passing.

In the second half, AZ’s captain was particularly effective snapping in to tackles high up the pitch and working hard in an effective press with his team-mates.

As Spurs looked to play out from the back, the Eredivisie side set up aggressively on the edge of the box, with players tasked to go after each centre-back as soon as they received it from Guglielmo Vicario.

AZ set up in a 4-2-3-1 formation, with Clasie alongside Peer Koopmeiners in the middle, while Zico Buurmeester played in the number 10 position last week with nine-goal attacking midfielder Sven Mijnans injured.

Head coach Maarten Martens had bemoaned his team’s lack of conviction during the October loss at Spurs - but that wasn’t the case seven days ago.

“In matches like this, everything has to be right. I think our first half was of a very high level,” said Martens afterwards. “In the second half it was a bit less - but we played a very mature match with moments of very good football.”

Ange Postecoglou warned in his pre-match interview of the threat of AZ’s wide players, and so it proved with left-back David Møller Wolfe (six assists this season) getting into excellent areas on the overlap to cross or cut the ball back.

Ernest Poku was a bag of tricks, too, when playing either on the right or left, but the winger was wasteful with his goalscoring opportunities.

Troy Parrott was at the heart of lots of AZ’s good play, starting with his work off the ball - showing tenacity to shut down Guglielmo Vicario whenever it was played back to Spurs’ goalkeeper.

Centre-back Archie Gray stood up well to the challenge early on and was happy to engage in the physical side of the game, something Radu Dragusin explained was necessary having faced the Republic of Ireland striker back on Matchday 3.

The 23-year-old had the intelligence to drop off as the game wore on to link play and flick the ball on to team-mates with his head. He also had one major chance to score, timing his run well before Vicario made the save in a one-vs-one situation in the first half.

“I blame myself for that,” said Parrott post-match. “With my qualities, I have to finish it off.”

He’ll need little further incentive to score against his former club tonight.

"I don't have any doubt about our ability to break them down,” said Postecoglou, looking ahead to the second leg. "Obviously, we have to play a little bit differently to how we did (in Alkmaar), not just with ball, but without the ball too.”

Matching AZ’s energy is crucial given they’ve had the weekend off - as was the case between the two legs of their remarkable 6-3 aggregate win over Galatasaray in the previous round.

Postecoglou also spoke of needing to be more aggressive in every aspect of their game, with AZ allowing little room for Spurs to thread passes or work the ball up the pitch.

“We were a little bit hesitant with the ball, hesitant in our pressing and we can't be that way," he added.