Tottenham players were warming up for a qualifying game in Skopje, North Macedonia, on Thursday when they noticed something unusual about the goals – they were too short.
Manager Jose Mourinho said that the club complained after noticing that the crossbars at the stadium were too low, and posted a picture of himself in the goal.
“I thought I had grown but then I realised that the goal was 5cm lower,” he wrote on Instagram.
Tottenham goalkeeper Hugo Lloris was easily grabbing the woodwork during warmups, he said, so the goals were changed before the start of the match.
Before the game was a funny situation because my goalkeepers told me that the goal was small, Mourinho told AP. I went by myself and of course the goal was small. The goalkeepers, they spend hours and hours and hours in the goal so they know when the goal is not the right dimension.
I am not a goalkeeper but I know football since I was a kid and I know when I stand there and I spread my arms and I know the distance, so I felt immediately that something was going wrong.”
The game was level 1-1 before Son Heung-min and Harry Kane scored in the final 20 minutes for Tottenham. Tottenham won the game 3-1 to advance to the playoff round.