Gomes backs Tottenham to go all the way ahead of Champions League draw

TOTTENHAM will be handed their opponents for the last 16 of the Champions League tomorrow (Friday) when the draw for the first knockout stage is made in Nyon.

The draw will take place at the Uefa headquarters in Switzerland at 11am. Having finished top of Group A, Spurs will face one of the runners-up from the other seven groups – although they cannot be paired with fellow English outfit Arsenal, who finished second in Group H.

The Lilywhites could, however, be pitted against AC Milan, Roma, Valencia, Lyon, Marseille or FC Copenhagen. Whatever happens, Tottenham will play the first leg away from home before returning to White Hart Lane for the second leg.

Spurs keeper Heurelho Gomes, who reached the semi-final with Guus Hiddink’s PSV Eindhoven in 2005 before being eliminated by AC Milan, is backing his current club to make it all the way to the final at Wembley in May.

“This squad is much better than the one that I went to the semi-finals with. I think we can go far,” he said.

“We have to focus on the next stage but we can look forward a little bit, and for an English team to play at Wembley in a final is so special. This is so important for us, but the most important thing is to keep going step by step.

“We have a big squad, a strong squad, and of course we believed that we could get to the knockout stages before we started the campaign.

“Harry said to us ‘we can do it, we can go through’, because we have great players in the squad, and that’s why we are here.”