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This article is part of Football FanCast's Opinion series, which provides analysis, insight and opinion on any issue within the beautiful game, from Paul Pogba's haircuts to League Two relegation battles...

Tottenham Hotspur have announced that Lucas Moura has signed a new contract.

That means five more years of the diminutive winger, the tricky pitbull of a player who will hunt you down, tackle you, then nutmeg you and leave you on the ground wondering what happened.

He fills a very specific spot in Mauricio Pochettino’s squad; he can play on the right or the left, he can play off Harry Kane or he can play up front with the England captain.

Oh, and there’s that goal.

You know the one. Not the first, the one where he latched onto Dele Alli’s pass and slammed the ball past Ajax’s goalkeeper Andre Onana. Not the second, either, when he bamboozled an entire defence with six touches and a laser-guided finish. Not either of those.

No, it’s the third. Do we need to describe it? Spurs fans might like us to, so let’s go right ahead.

The score is 2-2 in the Champions League semi-final. Spurs need another goal. The clock is ticking towards the fifth additional minute at the end of the second-half. Ajax have both feet in the final; they will play Liverpool in Madrid.

Then Moussa Sissoko fires the ball forward and Fernando Llorente knocks it down. Alli collects and executes a perfect flick into the path of the Brazilian.

Lucas shoots and it catches Onana cold. It flies into the bottom corner. Ajax’s players sink to the turf. The BT Sport cameras accidentally show Peter Walton, the referee helping analyse decisions, with a grin on his face. Darren Fletcher, in a now-iconic piece of commentary, screams: “It’s Lucas Moura, oh, they’ve done it, I cannot believe it!”

Spurs fans go wild, sent into the final by a goal scored by a player who wouldn’t even start the game.

One can debate the merits of that decision long into the night; Spurs lost to Liverpool, perhaps they wouldn’t have if Lucas had started.

But one thing is for sure; Lucas wrote his name into the club’s history with that strike, that first-time shot that arrowed into the bottom corner and gave a number of Spurs supporters the best night of their lives. Fans cried that night when the ball hit the back of the net.

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Tottenham, the team that always flirted with glory, the team that bought glory a drink only to see it head off happily arm-in-arm with someone else.

Finally, that team stood on the precipice of something genuinely momentous, and it was all thanks to one man.

That it didn’t happen is irrelevant. For a second, for a minute, for a night, for one glorious moment, it felt like Spurs were on top of the world.

Lucas gave the club that. He scored three goals. He was unplayable. Nobody else can claim to have scored that goal, to have sent Spurs into the Champions League final with almost the last kick of the game in Amsterdam.

He is unlikely to ever scale those heights again in his career.

After this announcement though, he has five years to try.

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