Spurs make history on Thursday evening | OneFootball

On Thursday evening, Tottenham Hotspur secured a hugely important 3-1 victory over AZ Alkmaar in the Europa League round of 16, advancing with a 3-2 aggregate score, and booking a quarter-final fixture with Eintracht Frankfurt.

Two of the three goals were scored by Wilson Odobert, his first goals in Spurs colours. With it, Spurs made some history.

Ange's side make history in their Europa League win over AZ Alkmaar

With those goals (well, with the first goal), Spurs became the first side in major European competition history to have five players under the age of 21 score a goal in the same season. Those five are; Will Lankshear, Dane Scarlett, Oyindamola Ajayi, Mikey Moore, and then Odobert.

The goal scored by Lankshear was in the league phase to now eliminated from the competition Galatasaray, whilst the goals from Scarlett, Ajayi and Moore all came in the 3-0 win over Elfsborg, in an incredible night for the academy.

Those three players are all from the academy, so 60% of the goals were scored by players produced by Hotspur Way. Even Lankshear, who was signed for a seven figure fee from Sheffield United, has been developed in the youth teams. Sure, Odobert was a fair investment, but he has definitely shown flashes of being more smart young recruitment from the club.

We can discuss that the club does need more experience and players in their prime, and there is some merit to that - you can't just have young players - but it is very exciting just how many players Spurs have that could come onto become top class players in the next few years.

Aside from the Alkmaar goal, Lucas Bergvall was incredible on Thursday evening, and at around £8million pounds, has shown to be an incredibly shrewd investment so far. To a lesser scale, it feels similar to Pedri at Barcelona, where they wasted an incredible amount of money on high profile names - whilst signing him for 5 million from Las Palmas.

Although the squad could do with a couple more players in their prime years, the nucleus of young players can prove to be very important. Who would you rather in midfield at the moment, 19-year old Bergvall, or 28-year old Yves Bissouma? An easy answer for everyone.