Cape Town - Tottenham Hotspur captain Harry Kane has revealed the nature of Jose Mourinho's half-time team talk during the 4-2 come-from-behind victory over Olympiakos.
Tottenham secured their place in the Champions League knockout stages with a 4-2 win over Olympiakos on Tuesday, with Kane netting twice in the second half to become the fastest player to score 20 goals in the competition in terms of appearances.
It helped seal a comeback victory for the hosts, who were two goals down after 19 minutes, had substituted Eric Dier in the first half and were displaying their weak heart.
Kane says rather than laying into his new players, Mourinho employed a more “calm” approach in the dressing room at the break, likely aided by Dele Alli making it 2-1 in stoppage time.
“You never know,” the England captain said after being asked if he thought the hairdryer was coming at half-time.
“It was calm, scoring just before half-time obviously helped.
“We just said, ‘We can’t play any worse than we have done so be calm, have a bit more freedom and energy, get the crowd off their feet’.
“That’s what we did, we came out created more chances, took our chances.
“Scoring the second goal early on definitely helped, we were calm, the manager was calm – he knows we can play better than that, we know we can play better than that and we did that in the second half.”
Spurs are through to the last 16 for the third successive year and it means they can travel to Bayern Munich for the final Group B game with their position in second guaranteed.
They enjoyed a memorable run in last season’s knock-out stages, culminating in a run to the final, and Kane wants his side to build on that.
“It was important we qualified, we didn’t want to leave it until the last game,” he added.
“After going 2-0 down it was a disappointing start but credit to the boys for digging deep and finding a great performance in the second half and getting through.
“We know what we did last year in the knock-out stages and we have to take that positive energy and try and do similar and go even further.
“We have got a quality squad, no doubt about that. We have got one of the best squads in Europe.
“In football when things don’t go your way it is easy to maybe drop your levels a little bit and you end up going on a downward spiral and you have got to pick it up.
“Last couple of games we have done that, but we know we have a lot of hard work to continue that.”