Conte’s Son is shining once again as Spurs hit ’em for six
ANTONIO CONTE’S decision to leave Heung-min Son on the bench proved to be a masterstroke.
It might have been just the catalyst the Tottenham darling needed to return to goalscoring form with a 13-minute hat-trick in this romp.
Son had looked a shadow of the player that shared last season’s Golden Boot with Mo Salah and had failed to score this term before yesterday, prompting Spurs boss Conte’s to rest his star.
But the South Korean was summoned with a little more than half-an-hour to play, with the game in the balance at 3-2, and then spectacularly took it away from Leicester with two
beauties from outside the box before slotting in his third.
“My finishing has been poor this season,” said Son.
“I knew goals were coming and I wasn’t worried. I’ve always had great supporters, team-mates and coaches behind me. I like to shoot from outside the box – I’ve practised that since I was a kid
“I’m really glad the ball finally went in!”
Silence is golden, and in the north London hush hour remembrance for a monarch had been largely observed with immaculate decorum.
Forget the handful of foghorn, boorish drunks who pierced the near-perfect calm.
The minute’s silence to
honour Queen Elizabeth II spoke volumes for the overwhelming majority of 60,000 Tottenham and Leicester supporters.
But Brendan Rodgers, stranded on the Premier League seabed, does not need peace and tranquility right now.
Amid what he calls the “noise” surrounding Leicester’s traumatic start to the season, the under-pressure Foxes manager needs supportive voices – and they are in short supply.
When Claudio Ranieri was in charge of five consecutive defeats in 2017, even the Tinkerman, who led the Foxes to their 5,000-1 title miracle nine months earlier, was not immune to the sack. It’s six defeats in a row for Rodgers now. And excuses for his side’s brittleness at set-pieces were exhausted long ago.
Eric Dier’s near-post header to put Spurs 2-1 up was so easy it was ghastly, and Leicester’s chronic weakness from dead-ball rituals has even become a laughing stock among their own fans.
When one Ivan Perisic corner was successfully repelled at the near post, almost 3,000 travelling missionaries from the parish of St Lineker celebrated sarcastically as if their team had scored.
As in previous visits to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Rodgers’ team contributed generously to the entertainment – especially in a madcap first half, where the defending at both ends was skittish at best.
But in the end, Leicester wilted like all the bouquets
destined to join floral tributes to the Queen on the fragrant Victoria Line at Seven Sisters.
England captain Harry Kane’s wife, Kate, and their children followed Conte’s lead by making a pilgrimage up The Mall to pay their respects.
Kane revealed in the matchday programme: “I was here at the club with training, but Kate took the kids down to Buckingham Palace.
“We thought it was important – they are young, they don’t
understand too much at the moment, but when they are older and they look back at the history of our country, the Queen was an integral part of that.
“They left some flowers outside Buckingham Palace – it’s a huge occasion in our history.”
And in keeping with the royal theme of the day, Spurs legend Gary Mabbutt was a halftime guest on the pitch, revealing his close connections with the House of Windsor. Mabbutt said: “I was one of the first ambassadors for the Prince’s Trust, so I got to know Prince Charles – sorry, King Charles III – very well. I wrote to him asking if he would sign a photograph of me lifting the FA Cup in 1991 for my personal collection and it’s there in my office to this day.” But, for Rodgers, serenaded by the chorus of the damned – “You’re Getting Sacked In The Morning” – it feels like the end of the road. If this was his final hand as Leicester manager, it was a royal flush. On the day football honoured the Queen, his job was going down the pan.