FURIOUS CONTE LAYS IT ON LINE
‘I’m not a magician,’ he warns after minnows Mura shame Spurs
YOU HAVE to hand it to Tottenham. This was a night to suck the zest from any manager. Even one with the boundless passion of Antonio Conte.
It took them all of three weeks. ‘I am starting to understand the situation — it is not simple,’ admitted Conte after this humiliation. ‘At this moment the level at Tottenham is not so high.
‘I am happy to stay here but we have to work a lot to improve the quality of the squad. We are Tottenham but there is an important gap with the top teams. I am not scared.’
Maybe not. But Conte is not naive, either. He will have seen how, with every road trip in the Europa Conference League, Spurs break new ground. How, with every foreign adventure, the rap sheet grows for their second-string. How, with every visit to a backwater of continental football, their capacity for charity knows no bounds.
The concern for Conte? After Spurs handed out famous wins to Pacos de Ferreira and Vitesse Arnhem, this embarrassment tops the lot.
NS Mura. A club founded in 2012, a team whose ground was deemed unfit to host this game. A side without a point in Europe’s thirdrate competition before last night.
Statistically the worst side in it — comparable in quality to Accrington Stanley, apparently. So for them, Amadej Marosa’s goal — with the last kick of the game — secured an unforgettable triumph.
As for the bubble of optimism that greeted Conte’s arrival in north London?
‘I am not a magician and after three weeks I have found players that want to work and have great commitment but sometimes it is not enough,’ he said.
‘I want to be very honest, we have to work a lot and improve in many, many aspects. We have to do better at many, many things. It is important in football to have vision. Where are you now and what do you want in the future.
‘We have to do better in everything, everything, everything.’
Here’s hoping that message gets through to Dele Alli, Bryan Gil and the other fringe players who wasted this chance to impress.
No one did their cause more harm than Ryan Sessegnon and Davinson Sanchez. Wing-back Sessegnon was sent off after 31 minutes on his first start since August, while Sanchez gift-wrapped both Mura goals.
First, on 11 minutes, he allowed Tomi Horvat to cut inside and curl Mura in front. And then, deep into stoppage time, he allowed Marosa to cut inside before deflecting the ball past Pierluigi Gollini into his own goal. Sanchez was nothing if not consistent.
It is nights like this that make you sympathise with Nuno Espirito Santo and his two-tier squad. Certainly, Conte will know more about his best team after this. Spurs now head into their final Group G game knowing, realistically, only victory over Rennes will keep alive their hopes of progression.
Mura were not even formed the last time Tottenham won silverware. Now they may have cost Conte his best chance of ending that drought.
The Italian had almost spared his side’s blushes with a quadruple substitution that stirred Spurs to life in the second half. Lucas Moura, one of those replacements, found Harry Kane — one of two survivors from Sunday’s win over Leeds — who cancelled out Horvat’s opener.
But then, deep into stoppage time Marosa was set free to score. A point would have been the most