The Tottenham Hotspur head coach will be left waiting for some of his players until the Premier League season is almost ready to kick off
Roberto De Zerbi knows that he must wait for a quartet of important players until just before Tottenham’s Premier League season kicks off.
The Spurs boss has been back at work with a large group of 25 Spurs players at Hotspur Way but the Italian knows that four of his stars will not be back and available until the season is almost underway. That’s because the north London club had 12 players away at the World Cup and three of them have reached the final – Cristian Romero, Marcos Senesi and Pedro Porro – as Argentina and Spain do battle in New Jersey on Sunday.
There is also Djed Spence, who could be involved as England take on France in a bronze medal match on Saturday that nobody wants apart from FIFA.
England manager Thomas Tuchel admitted: “No one wants to be involved in this game. Even going as far as to speak on behalf of the French team, too.
“None of our players and none of the French players want to play this match. They want to play the final. We gave everything to achieve that. Everyone plays to win the World Cup, but thatβs how it is. We have one less day of recovery than France, but we will do it with professionalism.”
The continued involvement of the Spurs quartet in the tournament has a knock-on effect for De Zerbi. That’s because all players are offered a minimum of three weeks’ rest after an international summer competition.
Assuming the four Tottenham players all end their international duty from Monday or Tuesday onwards when they land back in their homelands, three weeks off would mean the quartet would not return to training until the week ahead of Tottenham’s two Hoffenheim friendlies, having missed the opening five matches of pre-season and the club’s tour to New Zealand and Australia.
Romero has been linked with a move out of Tottenham so may not be one of De Zerbi’s players by then but his fellow Argentine Senesi will not get to arrive at his new club until late in pre-season when most of the work has already been done in adapting to the Italian’s style.
That Hoffenheim double header, across 24 hours at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and Hotspur Way training ground, represents the final warm-up games ahead of Spurs’ Premier League opener at Brentford just a week later on August 22.
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De Zerbi will have to decide whether any of the quartet are then ready to start or even play on that opening day, with the right-back role causing a potential issue as his two players in that position are Porro and Spence, who has also been linked with a Tottenham exit.
Both full-backs got plenty of minutes at the World Cup so at least may not be too rusty after three weeks off if they have a week or so of training under their belts beforehand, but the flipside is that they could probably do with longer out of the fray.
In terms of Spurs’ other World Cup players, Kevin Danso, Luka Vuskovic, Pape Matar Sarr, Lucas Bergvall, Micky van de Ven and Rodrigo Bentancur as well as summer signings Andy Robertson and Jan Paul van Hecke were all involved across the Atlantic.
Vuskovic has since left for Brighton in a Β£50million deal, while Robertson and Bentancur both exited in the group stages. So unless either decide to cut short their rest, that duo will not return to pre-season training until just in time to head off on the tour Down Under.
Using the three-week timeframe, the experienced duo could be back in the building before the game against MK Dons next week but might not be risked so soon after returning.
Then those Spurs players whose countries lost in the World Cup round of 32 such as Bergvall, Danso, Sarr, Van de Ven and Van Hecke could also be back just in time for the tour if the north London club choose not to sell any of them before that.
De Zerbi will have to find the best way of using the players he’s been working with while integrating the returning World Cup stars in the right way. One of the few benefits of a season without European football is that the matches will often be spaced a week apart which allows for moments of rest throughout the campaign for those who have had a busy summer.
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