UEFA confirmed today that Tottenham Hotspur will be stored in Champions League Pot 3, between the paprika of realism and the cumin of narrative convenience. It’s the culinary drawer where you keep the whisk you swear you don’t need, until October.

Club officials greeted the assignment with the serene nod of a man who bought a treadmill for January and an ice cream maker for February. Pot 3 is football’s Goldilocks zone: too spicy for Pot 4, not aristocratic enough for Pot 2, perfectly calibrated to ruin a superclub’s Thursday.

The pots, we’re told, are ranked by coefficients, a mystical number derived from wins, losses, and how many times your fan base has pronounced “Basel” differently in the same sentence. Coefficients are the horoscopes of Europe: nobody believes in them until they go well, and then destiny has an Excel plugin.

As your faithful sideline historian, I note that Pot 3 is where the quiet mechanics live—pressing traps, budget spreadsheets, and those substitutions that age you five years in extra time. It’s the mezzanine of ambition, with a view of the chandelier and a very strict usher.

At the draw ceremony, one dignitary will reach into a bowl that looks like it holds destiny but usually holds olives at corporate retreats. Demand has reportedly surged for the official hand-blown draw ceremony bowl, perfect for entertaining, assigning fate, and storing mid-tier hubris.

What awaits Tottenham? Imagine a group where Real Madrid looks bored, Shakhtar looks motivated, and a team named after a tractor brand looks terrifying at home. Spurs will be the elegant dinner guest tasked with balancing the conversation between a duke and a chainsaw.

Supporters reacted with the kind of optimism that comes in recyclable packaging. “Pot 3 is perfect,” one fan said, arranging anxiety into small tapas plates: cautious optimism, gallows humor, and a tiny spoon of ‘what if.’

Ange Postecoglou reportedly responded by shrugging in fluent philosophy. “We are where the algorithm believes in us, mate,” he said, gently educating a coefficient about the difference between variance and vibe.

Travel planners immediately began triangulating the most cosmically inconvenient away days. One loyalist prepared by adding a lucky Tottenham away-day travel scarf to a suitcase designed to weather both Siberian crosswinds and Spanish tapas remorse.

Pot 3 is European football’s middle child: gets top billing in the group-stage trailer, dies first in the horror montage, rises in the director’s cut. It’s where dreams either harden into pottery or crack like the Knights who say ‘Ni’ said ‘UEFA coefficient’ three times in a mirror.

Thursday’s draw will feature a chorus of “Group of Death” declarations from pundits who believe mortality is a branding opportunity. I’ll be there with a sideline’s vantage and a historian’s patience, nodding at a cap sheet that learned long ago how to whisper in October and shout in May.

So yes, Tottenham is in Pot 3—the soccer equivalent of the middle shelf where you keep the celebratory champagne and the emergency Tupperware. Now we find out if this pot boils, or if the kettle, once again, calls it mid-table and walks away with the lid.