Jose Mourinho reveals eagle-eyed Joe Hart’s discovery led to Uefa complaint

Nothing gets past Joe Hart (make your own jokes)

After a brief scare, Tottenham recorded a comfortable 3-1 victory in their Europa League play-off game against Shkendija in North Macedonia on Thursday night.

After the game, Jose Mourinho revealed how an observation from his goalkeepers prompted the club to lodge a successful complaint to Uefa ahead of kick-off.

Speaking in his post-match press conference in Skopje, Mourinho told reporters how Joe Hart had informed him before the game that the goals in the stadium were too small.

“Before the game was a funny situation because my goalkeeper [Joe Hart] told me the goal was small," Mourinho said. “I went to see and it was small. The goalkeepers spend all their time in them so we know." After seeing the goals for himself, Mourinho decided it was appropriate to lodge a complaint to Uefa. A brief investigation concluded that Hart had been correct. “I felt immediately something was wrong and we got the Uefa delegate to come in and it was 5cm too small. We asked for goals of the right dimensions.” Sure enough, the height of the goal frames were promptly adjusted in good time for kick-off. Mourinho shared a picture to his Instagram page after the game, joking that he thought he had gone through a growth spurt.

Spurs took a first half lead in the game courtesy of Erik Lamela, though were pegged back minutes after the interval via Nafiu's equaliser. Any hopes of an upset for the home side were soon extinguished when Son Heung-min restored Spurs' lead with 20 minutes left, with Harry Kane making absolutely sure of victory with 10 minutes later.

Mourinho's side return to domestic action with the league game against Newcastle on Sunday. There isn't expected to be any pre-kick-off height adjustments for the goal frames at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium.