Wednesday night’s showcase fixture in Bilbao pits together familiar domestic rivals whose form on the continent has belied their ongoing struggles at home.
Both Spurs and United have endured truly torrid Premier League campaigns, suffering their 21st and 18th defeats of the season respectively on Friday night, against Aston Villa and Chelsea, to leave them sitting 17th and 16th with just one match left to play this term.
But remarkably they still have a chance to make this most woeful of seasons a memorable one as they go head to head at the Estadio de San Mames in the Basque Country, with Tottenham having easily seen off Norwegian champions Bodo/Glimt 5-1 on aggregate in the semi-finals after squeezing past Eintracht Frankfurt and also beating AZ Alkmaar after finishing fourth in the inaugural league phase of Europe’s secondary club competition.
United, meanwhile, emphatically denied Athletic Club a fairytale home final appearance in Bilbao after stunning Lyon in an all-time classic tie in the last eight having thrashed Real Sociedad and ended the league phase in third.
These two totally out-of-form teams have just two wins from their last 18 league games combined, but for one a major trophy still beckons, as does a coveted place in next season’s Champions League proper.
For Spurs, it would be a first trophy of any sort since the 2008 League Cup under Juande Ramos and first in Europe for 41 years since the 1983/84 Uefa Cup, while United won the FA Cup last season under Erik ten Hag. They last lifted European silverware with the 2016/17 Europa League under Jose Mourinho, beating Ajax in the final in Stockholm.
The omens are good for Tottenham, who have not lost any of their last six games against United across all competitions and have beaten them three times already this season, twice in the Premier League without conceding – 3-0 and 1-0 – as well as coming out on top in a seven-goal thriller in the quarter-finals of the Carabao Cup in December.
Europa League final prize money: How much will Tottenham and Manchester United earn?
Though both clubs will still earn plenty this season, finishing so low in the Premier League will be an obvious hit to revenue streams.
They will hope to make up some of that shortfall in the Europa League, where there is an overall prize pot of €565million (£475.4m) to be shared across every club competing.
€25m (£21m) of that goes to the winners, with €18.5m (£15.5m) reserved for the runners-up.
