Lucas Moura admitted he was living his childhood dreams as he fired us into the Champions League Final in Amsterdam on Wednesday night.
Trailing 3-0 on aggregate to Ajax at half-time in the semi-final, second leg, we produced a rousing second-half response, with Lucas the man of the moment as we came back to win 3-2 on the night, drawing 3-3 overall and sensationally going through to our first-ever Final at European football’s top table on away goals.
The Brazilian forward bagged a hat-trick of well-taken strikes, the last one coming SIX minutes into added time as we made one last-ditch push to pull ourselves back from the brink.
I don’t have words to explain this moment!” beamed Lucas as he spoke to Spurs TV after the game. “It’s very special for me, I am very, very happy and very proud of my team-mates. Of course, I need to share (this moment) with all my team-mates, my family, my friends. I always believed it was possible to come here, to win and to go to the Final. We fought – that’s what we needed to do with our intensity. The second half was amazing and everyone did really well. I need to enjoy this moment – it’s impossible to explain!”
Lucas kick-started the comeback on 55 minutes before lashing in on the turn four minutes later. The ex-PSG man revealed the group spoke at half-time about the importance of getting off the mark: “In the changing room, the gaffer said we need to score one goal. If we score one goal we are in the game and when I scored the first, it gave us a lot of motivation to keep working and to keep fighting. After the second one, that’s football, everything is possible and we needed to believe. I always say that we need to believe and I believed. If we play like this, everything is possible.”
Summing up his night, Lucas said: “The Champions League Final, it’s a dream for me. Since I was a child I dreamed of this moment and now I’ve lived this moment. It’s the best moment in my career for sure. In the last minutes, we needed to try. I was there and the ball came to me. I could shoot the ball and when I saw it was a goal, it was unbelievable, impossible to explain the feeling! Everyone deserves this moment – every player, the coach, the staff, the chairman because this club is amazing and I am so happy to be part of the Tottenham family and to give the supporters such joy. Now we can think about the Final.”
