Promising Early Glimpses for Tottenham's Georges-Kévin Nkoudou
It was a brief cameo, but new Tottenham winger Georges-Kévin Nkoudou raised expectations on Tuesday when he came off the bench against CSKA Moscow.
His prior club, Olympique de Marseille, agreed to sell him to Tottenham for a relatively nominal amount in late July. Due to a change in Marseille’s ownership and a snag hit with Clinton Njie’s visa paperwork — the Tottenham player was going on loan in the opposite direction — Nkoudou’s move was delayed and delayed. Tottenham only welcomed the player into the team on the final day of the transfer window.
As a result, the French under-21 international has only slowly been introduced into the side over the last week. He made his debut off the bench in last week’s EFL Cup opener, came on at the very end of the match against Middlesbrough on the weekend and played 23 minutes at CSKA Moscow on Tuesday.
It’s that latter appearance that really got Tottenham hearts racing, however briefly.
More from Hotspur HQ
He didn’t score the decisive goal — that was Heung-min Son, four minutes after Nkoudou came on — nor did he set it up. What he did do was refuse to be intimidated by an indomitable CSKA defense.
A 21-year-old with only two seasons of meaningful first team experience — all of which took place in France’s Ligue 1 — might be justified in getting the jitters playing in his first Champions League match.
Instead, he charged at CSKA. He ran past formerly impenetrable defenders. He added width to a Tottenham game that was fool-heartedly narrow. He set up a shot and took one of his own. If it wasn’t exactly an outstanding performance, it was hardly anonymous.
Critics might say that Nkoudou had the advantage of coming on against a CSKA team close to exhaustion after almost 70 minutes of constant defending. There’s some truth in that, but it’s impossible to ignore the spark that provoked Tottenham into making a move for him in the first place.
Where does Nkoudou go from here? A handful of minutes even in the Champions League isn’t going to earn him a start over Son or Christian Eriksen, but it’s a start. He will no doubt feature again from the bench in the coming weeks. The EFL Cup fourth round matchup against Liverpool might be a tempting place for Mauricio Pochettino to give Nkoudou his first start.
If he can sustain the form he turned in on Tuesday, there’s a decent chance his chances increase.
Dele Alli was another precocious young talent who didn’t expect to get starts so early in his career but quickly became a fixture of the starting XI. Whether Nkoudou is on the same level as the England international has yet to be seen, but our first glimpses are certainly promising.
This article originally appeared on 
