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Things can always get worse. Much, much worse. If there is a place below rock bottom, Tottenham seem determined to go there. The Champions League may not be a priority, Igor Tudor publicly declaring survival their only concern, but that didn’t make it any less painful, nor easier to forget. This, instead, will linger for a long time. It wasn’t even the 5-2 defeat that hurt, not really, and it certainly wasn’t their now inevitable exit from Europe: it was how it happened, the opening 20 minutes quite possibly the stupidest, most absurd, most astonishing minutes of football you have ever seen.

If, that is, you can really call it football all; this was a dramatic act of self-destruction that ‘Spursy’ doesn’t get anywhere near, both deeply comic and also desperately sad, the final ridiculous scene of a tragedy, the ultimate humiliation. Only, terrifyingly, that may still be to come, because if this the Metropolitano was a testing ground for the fight against relegation as the manager said, the conclusion can only be that the abyss is opening up. There could be no joy, certainly, in watching poor Antonin Kinsky heading down the tunnel, broken and withdrawn on just 16 minutes, inconsolable after glaring errors led to two of the goals that had already given Atlético a 3-0 lead.

Micky van de Ven had handed Atlético the other and no sooner had Vicario come on to replace the Czech keeper than he had conceded the fourth, Spurs again complicit in their own demise, a Pape Sarr header towards his own goal leading to the fourth. Pedro Porro pulled one back before half-time but there was no way back from this – not now, not ever – with goals from Julián Alvarez and Dominic Solanke completing the scoring on the night Spurs returned to the stadium where they played the 2019 Champions League final, watched by Mauricio Pochettino. A reminder, tinged with regret, that they were good once. They are not now.

Tudor had said that Tottenham have problems in defence, midfield and attack, which sounded pretty comprehensive but still he had managed to fall as short in his analysis of just how awful things are as he has in his attempts to do anything about it. Plenty had already concluded that he could add “in goal” to that but even the most pessimistic, which is most people at Spurs, could not have imagined anything quite like this, an opening beyond comprehension, the kind of script you couldn’t write.

With Guglielmo Vicario left out – a decision that might be have been justified by the Premier League being the priority but also, just as legitimately by his play – Kinsky took his place and was so, so painfully bad that Tudor swapped them over again after a quarter of an hour that had already effectively ended this, the tie over just a 12th of the way in.

Nor was he alone, Spurs falling apart from the very start. If the long throw routine that was wasted after only a minute felt a bit like a portrait of their season, if the yellow card after just three minutes was bad, if the chance that Ademola Lookman made for Griezmann after four frightened them, what came next could have played out to the sound of a kazoo and the crash of cymbals. A short goal kick from Cristian Romero left the ball at Kinsky’s feet and as he swung his leg he slipped, fell, and sent the ball straight to Lookman who fed Alvarez. Alvarez laid the ball for Marcos Llorente to score.

It had only just started too, the second goal as bad as the first, Micky van de Ven’s turn to hear the cymbals crash, and the third was the worst of all. On 13 minutes, Spence and Tel failed to deal with a simple enough ball up the right, the Dutchman slipping over and Antoine Griezmann running clean through to score. And just two minutes after that Van de Ven played the ball back to Kinsky who somehow managed to kick the ball off his own leg to leave Álvarez with an open goal. Fifteen minutes in, three gifts and the game was gone. So too was the goalkeeper.

Tudor took Kinsky off. Two members of staff went going down the tunnel with him, an arm on each shoulder, and were soon followed by Conor Gallagher, Solanke, João Palhinha went down the tunnel after him, aware that this was the kind of moment a player might never recover from. Heading in the other direction was Vicario, who almost immediately made an exceptional save – from his own player. Pape Sarr had not just deflected the free-kick towards his own goal, either; he had actually headed it. And as the ball came back off the keeper’s gloves, Robin Le Normand was there top nudge it over the line.

Still the show went on. Pedro Porro dashed through to make it 4-1 on 25 minutes. By then some Spurs fans had given up but for a moment it felt like, bizarre though it was, there might even be a game here. Jan Oblak saved from Richarlison and Romero hit the post. It was but a moment: at the other end, Vicario made another save from Lookman, Van de Ven might have been sent off for a second time in six days – maybe the referee took pity – and Llorente shot wide from six yards.

And the next glimpse of something even half good from Spurs, nine minutes into the second half, was eclipsed immediately. From the moment that Oblak stopped Richarlison’s diving header to Alvarez running on to Griezmann’s glorious touch and into space to slot past Vicario for the fifth, just 12 seconds had past.

The temptation might have been to call Solanke’s sharp, high finish a consolation goal but there was none. Instead, on 90 minutes there was yet another a scene to sum Spurs up, Paulinha and Romero crashing into each other and left lying on the turf, a picture of their self-destruction.