There's a fresh feel to the lineup for the Champions League semifinals this season, even if it contains some of the most storied teams and
recognized players in Europe, reports AP.
This time there's no Real Madrid, the three-time defending champion and Europe's dominant team of this generation.
There's no Cristiano Ronaldo, the superstar forward who has virtually made this competition his own in recent years.
And there's no Juventus, Bayern Munich and Atletico Madrid — frequent last-four representatives of late.
Instead, the survivors this year in the biggest club competition in world soccer are a surprise package from England, a blast from the past from the Netherlands, and two more aristocrats of the European game looking to end lean spells in the Champions League — by their lofty standards, anyway.
Few could have foreseen one of the semifinal matchups being Tottenham vs. Ajax.
Tottenham hasn't bought a player in the last two transfer windows, needed a last-gasp draw at Barcelona's Camp Nou to get out of its group, and has beaten Borussia Dortmund and Manchester City to reach its first European Cup semifinal in 57 years.
Hailing from the largely ignored Dutch league, Ajax is back in the semis for the first time since 1997 and seeking a fifth European Cup title — and first since 1995.
Much like Monaco two seasons ago, Ajax has emerged from nowhere to stun some of the top teams on the continent, its youth-filled team beating Madrid and Juventus — Ronaldo's past and present teams — in the knockout stage.
The other semifinal is just as intriguing and features teams expected to get this far.
However, it remains something of a mystery as to why Barcelona — led by Lionel Messi — has only made it to the last four once in the previous five years. That was in 2015, the year it won the title for the fifth time.
Liverpool is also a five-
time European champion and a power again in the English
Premier League under Juergen Klopp.
Ajax's players had their feet up at the weekend after all fixtures in the Dutch top flight were canceled in an effort to help the team stay fresh for the semifinal.
The Amsterdam club will go into the first leg on Tuesday on the back of a seven-day rest.
As for Tottenham, manager Mauricio Pochettino played a close-to-full-strength team in a 1-0 defeat against West Ham in the Premier League on Saturday, with injuries limiting his ability to rotate amid a grueling schedule of games every three or four days.
Spurs have yet to seal a top-four finish in the league, which guarantees a return to the Champions League next season.
Tottenham heads into the first leg at its newly built 1 billion-pound stadium with striker
Harry Kane, midfielder Harry Winks and winger Erik Lamela among those injured, forward Heung-min Son suspended, and a big doubt over the fitness of increasingly influential midfielder Moussa Sissoko.
"We are competing with circumstances that are not the best," Pochettino said.
Ajax beat both Madrid and Juventus away in the knockout stage.
Ajax and Tottenham last met in European competition in 1981, in the first round of the European Cup Winners' Cup, with Tottenham winning.
