Tottenham Hotspur hasn't improved ever since Igor Tudor was appointed as interim head coach. The English club has yet to register a win in 2026 and are firmly in a relegation battle.
I believe the Champions League performance against Atletico Madrid epitomised the way Spurs have been playing. At the centre of this tie was their goalkeeper, Antonin Kinsky. He played for a mere 17 minutes but conceded 3 goals in that time period. He was hauled off after a nightmare debut.
A curiosity and an incredibly bitter evening at the same time: two remarkable things happened at crisis club Tottenham Hotspur in the first leg of the round of 16 at Atlético Madrid.
It was in the sixth minute of Tottenham’s Champions League last-16 tie against Atletico Madrid that Antonin Kinsky’s night began to unravel.
A routine phase of build-up had worked its way back toward the Spurs goalkeeper, which should've set up a relatively straightforward action but just as he attempted to play out from the back, his footing suddenly gave way on the slippery surface and he landed on his backside. As the ball squirted loose, panic set in for the young goalkeeper, who was making his Champions League debut and after a squirmish in the box, Marcos Llorente slotted home to give Atletico an early lead.
Moments later, the chaos continued. Another slip — this time from Micky van de Ven — allowed Antoine Griezmann the space to race in on goal virtually unchallenged and drive a low finish into the bottom corner. Then, before Tottenham had any time to steady themselves and just as it felt like things couldn’t get any worse, Kinsky slipped once again.
As he attempted a crossfield pass, mishitting it directly into the path of Julian Alvarez, who calmly rolled the ball into an empty net as the Spurs goalkeeper laid down flat on the turf with his head buried in his hands.
What should've been a dream debut for the 22-year-old goalkeeper in Europe’s biggest club competition had spiraled into a nightmare within the opening minutes.
For goalkeepers, mistakes rarely go unpunished and when they do happen, the unfortunate reality is that they often play out dramatically and in full view of everyone.
The moments that unfolded for Kinsky are the type of errors that every goalkeeper fears. The actions themselves — receiving the ball under pressure, setting the body shape to distribute, clearing danger — are ones that professional goalkeepers perform countless times across a season but on this occasion, everything went terribly wrong.
The first feeling after an error is usually shock — that instant where you are thinking to yourself, "How the hell did that just happen!?"
The physical reaction can be just as overwhelming. Your pulse races as huge swathes of anxiety course through your body and the reality of your situation sets in. Then, before you even have a chance to react, your stomach drops and you feel like you want to throw up. Honestly, there is a part of you that wants to disappear from the pitch altogether.
The seconds after committing an error are often the lowest moments a goalkeeper will experience. You feel completely helpless and incredibly alone; knowing that you have let your entire team down. It’s a feeling that every single goalkeeper in the world has felt at some point.
After just 17 minutes into the match, Tottenham head coach, Igor Tudor, made the extraordinary decision to substitute Kinsky, bringing on the experienced Guglielmo Vicario in his place.
Though pulling a struggling goalie early in a game can happen in ice hockey, in football, the decision to substitute a goalkeeper before half-time — let alone after 17 minutes — is frankly unheard of.
As Kinsky walked toward the tunnel, head down, the television cameras followed. Several team-mates and members of the backroom staff followed him shortly afterward, showing that those around him understood the magnitude of what he had just experienced. Yet, what stood out most in that moment was the lack of acknowledgement from Tudor as he left the pitch.
For many former players watching, that moment was jarring.
"It broke my heart," said former England goalkeeper, Joe Hart, on TNT Sports. "He’s had a bad 14 minutes, there’s no getting away from it. Even the stadium (Atletico fans) is feeling sorry for him. Tudor doesn’t even acknowledge his goalie."
Former Liverpool centre-back, Jamie Carragher, said on Paramount that he placed responsibility squarely with Tudor: "I blame the manager. He put him there."
Peter Schmeichel, who starred for Denmark and Manchester United, went so far as to say on Paramount that the decision could threaten Kinsky’s entire career: "That is going to have ramifications for the rest of his career. This will be a moment that everybody in football will always remember every time they see or hear his name."
"You’ve got to stick with him and at least stick until half-time. What he’s done there for me … He’s absolutely killed his career. That’s going to take something to get over that. I feel really, really sorry for him."
Former Manchester United and current Fiorentina goalkeeper, David de Gea, captured the feeling shared across the goalkeeping community when he posted during the match: "No one who hasn’t been a goalkeeper can understand how difficult it is to play in this position. Keep your head up and you will go again."
Once a mistake happens, you need to recognise as quickly as possible that you can't change it — no matter how desperately you wish you could rewind the clock and start over. The only path forward is to digest that it happened, learn from it and eventually move on. However, that process becomes far more difficult when the mistake occurs on one of football’s biggest stages because moments like these can linger for years.
When re-watching Kinsky’s errors, it’s hard not to think of the mistakes that former Liverpool goalkeeper, Loris Karius, made in the 2018 Champions League final, and the fallout that unfortunately followed him for several years.
Each time he made a mistake in the months and years that followed, the subsequent error would be replayed endlessly as supposed proof of the narrative already attached to his name — that he was an error-prone goalkeeper.
The biggest difference between these two cases is that Karius had played consistently leading into that final, whereas Kinsky hadn't played a first-team match since October before being thrust into one of the most demanding environments in club football.
Goalkeeping relies heavily on rhythm. Confidence with the ball at your feet — particularly in a system that asks the goalkeeper to initiate build-up — is developed through repetition in matches, or match-like situations. Without that rhythm, hesitation can creep into situations that would normally feel automatic. Expecting a young goalkeeper to step into a Champions League knockout tie after months without playing and immediately perform at his best is asking an enormous amount.
Starting him was a bold call but substituting him after just 17 minutes will inevitably feel like the ultimate betrayal for the player involved. For a 22-year-old already experiencing the lowest moment of his career, it must feel like he is being fed to the wolves.
Football may only be a game in the broader context of the world but inside the sport, the emotions are very real. For someone who has spent his entire life working to reach this stage, a night like this can make it feel as though everything is collapsing around him. There will be no one who feels worse this morning.
This was one of those moments when Kinsky needed support from his manager more than anything else. Even something small — a few quiet words, a reassuring hug or simply a hand on the shoulder as he leaves the pitch — can matter enormously to a goalkeeper in that situation.
Instead, there was nothing from Tudor as Kinsky walked past him. By the time the manager did eventually speak with him after the match, the damage had already been done and the sense of betrayal could have taken hold.
For Kinsky, the challenge will be acceptance. The best thing he can eventually tell himself is simple: “That sucked — but I know I’m better than that,” and move on.
Kinsky thus became the first goalkeeper in CL history to be substituted uninjured within the first 20 minutes. He left the field dismayed and with tears in his eyes. On his way to the dressing room, two coaches came to his aid and comforted the Czech, who joined from Slavia Prague in January 2025 for a transfer fee of €16.5 million.
Tudor, however, defended his decision to start Kinsky, adding that the player had apologised for his performance.
"After you see what happened, it’s the wrong decision. But it was the right decision before," Tudor said. "Strange game. We gave them three goals. The three situations kill us. Very unusual. It’s difficult to explain. It’s the first time I’ve seen this in my 15-year career."
Tudor blanked Kinsky after he replaced him with Guglielmo Vicario, Spurs’ regular first-choice goalkeeper. "We don’t need to comment. We don’t need to speak too much,” Tudor said. “He was sorry. He made an excuse to the team. The team is with him. Me too. I was speaking with him. He understands the moment. He understands. So, as I said before, he is a very good goalkeeper. We are all together. It is not about one player."
Tudor also claimed he substituted Kinsky to protect him: "It happened very rare things in my coaching 15 years, I never do that. It was necessary to preserve the guy, to preserve the team."
Real Madrid goalkeeper, Thibaut Courtois, has revealed he reached out to Antonin Kinsky following his catastrophic Champions League outing against Atletico Madrid.
After Real's win over Man City, the Belgian stopper spoke to the press and was asked about Kinsky's nightmare performance in goal. The veteran goalkeeper told the 22-year-old to 'keep his head up' after revealing he sent him a private message following Tuesday's game.
"I sent that guy a private message," he told Ziggo Sport. "I know it's sh*t for him, but he's well surrounded by his club, so this will work out. I also made mistakes at Atletico and Chelsea. And when Messi once kicked two balls through my legs, I got a lot of flak too."
"It wasn't as bad as it was for him but I know this is very difficult. I told him to see it as a learning experience. He has talent and needs to keep working hard. The fact that he was in goal also means the coach had a lot of confidence in him."
Kinsky has played twelve competitive matches for Spurs, conceding 19 goals. In the current season, he had previously only made two appearances in cup competitions.
The hope is that he can realise that the mistakes he made on Tuesday night may hurt deeply and the scars will never fully disappear but they don't have to define the rest of his career.
This wasn't the time to give Kinsky a debut. His inexperience reared it's ugly head. Tudor should've been more wiser and for that matter, more comforting. Drrastic changes may be needed for avoiding relegation. Sacking Tudor and hiring a different interim manager might be the perfect remedy for all the calamity that has happened.