Thus far, Tottenham Hotspur have been making do in preseason without any of their regular central defenders, thanks to this summer’s European Championship and Copa America tournaments. Spurs have been forced into playing 18-year-old newcomer Archie Gray and Oliver Skipp as makeshift central defenders at times since Cuti Romero, Micky van de Ven, and Radu Dragusin all were taking a well-deserved break after the conclusion of their competitions.
Dragusin has since returned to training and played in the second half of Spurs’ 4-3 win over the K-League All-Stars on Wednesday, and Ben Davies is also back from an early injury to feature some in the later stages of preseason. And now, in a press conference ahead of Sunday’s friendly against Bayern Munich in Seoul, Ange Postecoglou has confirmed that the remainder of Spurs’ wayward sons — Romero, Van de Ven, Rodrigo Bentancur, and (presumably) Giovani Lo Celso — will return to the fold on Monday.
“I don’t think it’ll be too challenging [to get the returning players fit] because, you know, they’ve only both of them sort of had three weeks off and you know, both Micky and Cuti and Rodrigo will be back all this week.
“They’ve had good preparations coming into it and we know they’ll be looking after themselves and we’ve still got two weeks before the season starts. So that’s a still a fair chunk of time for us to get them ready for the start of the season and beyond, because it’s not just about the first game, it’s about the games after that.
“We’ve seen how the guys who maybe have come in a bit later, like Radu came in this week within a few sessions they’re back up to speed and I expect the other guys to be the same.”
That’s good news! Preseason matches are about fitness and not about performance, but it’s often hard to get a real sense of how this Tottenham team is going to perform this season without its starting back line. And we still won’t get a good sense of that until the NEXT match against Bayern Munich — the Visit Malta Cup match at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium next weekend.
THIS match against a Harry Kane-less Bayern Munich will presumably feature Dragusin and Davies, with some of the kids like Ash Phillips or Jamie Donley rotating in or out as needed or requested by Ange, and of course, that’s completely fine.
Elsewhere, Spurs are still training in a hot and steamy Seoul, with daily temperatures expected to peak in the mid-90sº F while Spurs are there. We saw that the heat and humidity took a toll on the team in Tokyo, and I’d expect similar conditions in tomorrow’s friendly at the Seoul World Cup Stadium. Ange acknowledged that the weather conditions have been and continue to be a challenge, but the team is looking at it as an obstacle to overcome and to improve their overall fitness in extreme conditions.
“You’re right, it is a challenge at this time of the year. I’ve experienced it myself working in Japan, but at the same time, I think it’s a good challenge for the players and mentally as much as anything else to adjust the conditions to still work hard, to train and still try to play our football during the practice games we’ve had.
“So I think at times it’s been really difficult but they’ve pushed through and I think we’ll get the benefits of that when we get back to London. And, you know, they’re having a heat wave now and it’s 24 degrees. So my boys will be pretty relaxed about that.
“And I think mentally we’ll come out of this stronger knowing that in tough conditions, they still manage to work hard and the games have shown that we can still perform at a good level.”
Tottenham’s match against Bayern Munich kicks off at 8:00 p.m. local time (7 a.m. ET / 12 p.m. BST). The match will be streamed on SpursPLAY, Tottenham’s in-house premium streaming service, but also will be televised on CBS Sports Network in the United States.