Tottenham will again have to do it the hard way in the Champions League after they suffered a 1-0 home defeat in the first leg of their last-16 tie with RB Leipzig.

Spurs’ run to the final last season was full of great escapes and comeback wins and they will need another after Timo Werner’s second-half penalty gave the Bundesliga side a deserved win in their first-ever knockout game in this competition.

It also gives 32-year-old Leipzig coach Julian Nagelsmann, who has been dubbed ‘Baby Mourinho’ and is a rising star of European football, the edge over the man he has been named after.

But Spurs boss Jose Mourinho will claim this was not a fair fight as he was without two of his best attacking players, with the loss Son Heung-min on the eve of the match adding to that of Harry Kane.

The defeat would have been much worse had Hugo Lloris not produced a number of vital saves to keep Leipzig at bay, while Tottenham struggled for clear opportunities at the other end.

Giovani Lo Celso had the best of them as his free kick was turned on to the post, but it was a frustrating night for Mourinho.

Spurs will look to last season’s semi-final, where they turned around a similar first-leg defeat by Ajax with a dramatic night in Amsterdam, and there is the sense that something similar will be required in Leipzig on 10 March.