Thomas Tuchel says Tottenham Hotspur boss Antonio Conte failed to take advantage of Conference League exit

Thomas Tuchel has expressed that Tottenham Hotspur boss Antonio Conte has failed to take advantage of their exit from the UEFA Europa Conference League. They had crashed out of the competition after failing to complete the fixtures in the group stage.

Tottenham were handed an advantage following their expulsion from the Conference League. Their congested fixture list was handed some leeway despite their involvements in the FA Cup and the Carabao Cup. After all, they did not have to deal with matches in midweek, but in hindsight, the Blues were not affected by it in the end.

Speaking to the reporters on Wednesday (h/t The Mirror), Tuchel has revealed how frustrated he was with Spurs exiting the UECL. However, he has taken a sly dig at Conte by conveying that the latter could not use their fixture advantage in the best possible way.

“They have been given a huge advantage. I was not happy when Tottenham were out of the (Europa) Conference League. Because I thought, ‘Wow, I know what Antonio Conte can do with teams when they are focused and he can train them physically’. I thought this will be a huge uplift for them in the domestic competition, and the same for Arsenal when they went out of the cup. I thought it would be a huge boost for them because they have a very young and talented team.”

Truth to Tuchel’s words?

While the Blues coach’s words do make sense, it falls short when the appropriate context is applied. We exited the Conference League back in December, but the Italian manager did not enjoy much time working with his team at that point.

While the North London side’s departure from European football gave him more days to train his players, the situation at N17 was far from ideal to work his magic from the get-go. After all, the squad was in a dire situation following the bleak days under Nuno Espirito Santo.

What’s more, the former Inter Milan coach also had to deal with underperforming players like Tanguy Ndombele, for example, during that period. Things only got better following January after fringe players were cleared out while quality additions like Dejan Kulusevski and Rodrigo Bentancur were brought into the team.

That was the first time when Conte was afforded the time and resources to instil his identity into the team. However, improvements cannot be made in a short duration, especially when we have stagnated in quality over the past few years or so.

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So Tuchel is wrong in the sense that Conte failed to make use of the fixture advantage when we are currently in contention to qualify for next term’s Champions League. The Tottenham boss certainly did a solid job to even get us to this point when no one expected him to do so initially.

We are happy with our man in charge, and we firmly believe that he could do much better with better players in his squad. Despite the winter signings, considerable improvements need to be made in several areas of the pitch for us to even reach Chelsea’s level. Hence, it would not have been reasonable to think that we could have pipped them in the Premier League standings.