With the domestic season back underway, Antonio Conte has been speaking to the press about the Tottenham Hotspur players he was impressed with during the mid-season break.
Eleven Tottenham players headed out to Qatar last month for the 2022 World Cup. Meanwhile, the rest of the squad stayed behind at Hotspur Way to partake in extra training with Conte and his team.
As well as an intense training regime, the club also organised three friendly matches to keep the players sharp ahead of the domestic campaign resuming. The games against Motherwell and Nice offered plenty of players the chance to show Conte what they can do, along with a behind-closed-doors fixture against Peterborough’s U21s.
Speaking to the club website last week, Conte stated he was impressed with Oliver Skipp, Yves Bissouma, and Matt Doherty during the mid-season break. In his latest press conference ahead of the match against Aston Villa, the Spurs boss offered an expanded list of players he was happy with during the break.
He told Football.London: “It was a great opportunity for me and my staff to work with the players, especially the young players that didn’t play in the World Cup. To work with Pape Sarr, he played in the World Cup but then came back two weeks before and worked with us. I think [he] is a really good prospect and I like the two weeks we worked after the World Cup with him.”
“It was the same for Gil and we exploited this time to work with Skippy again, because Skippy is another player that last season in my first two, three months helped me and helped the team. Then he had an injury and he stopped work. It was good for me to work again with him and put him under a bit of pressure in a tactical aspect and physical aspect on his body and mind,” he added.
Conte continued his praise of youngster Harvey White, too, saying: “[He] was a good surprise because we are talking about a young player, but really, really clever, a player that I can ask him to play in every position and he is good to do it. I think it was positive to exploit this time.”
“Also it was good to bring Doherty in a good physical condition after a serious injury. It was the same for Japhet Tanganga, because don’t forget he had a lot of problems with his knee. But during the Christmas period we worked with him and for this reason I gave him the opportunity to play because he deserved his chance,” Conte concluded.
(Photo by Mark Leech/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
Spurs Web Opinion
It’s good to hear Conte speak so highly of younger players in the squad and the players who are somewhat on the periphery of the squad. That said, it’s a bit strange to hear praise for the likes of Pape Matar Sarr and Bryan Gil, in the same week as we hear rumours suggesting they will leave the club.
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