Soccer

Richarlison injury not to sideline striker for World Cup, says Conte

‘It’s not so serious. I hope for him to play other games’ with Tottenham before mid-season tournament

Richarlison of Spurs holding his calf during the game against Everton in London. File photograph: EPA
Richarlison of Spurs holding his calf during the game against Everton in London. File photograph: EPA
David Hytner
Mon Oct 17 2022 - 22:35

Antonio Conte has moved to allay fears that Richarlison will miss the World Cup. The Brazil striker limped out of Tottenham’s 2-0 win against Everton on Saturday with a calf injury and was in tears as he worried that he faced a lengthy lay-off.

Conte said Richarlison would miss the Premier League game at Manchester United on Wednesday and, as the player awaits the result of an MRI scan, it remains unclear when he will return. But the mana­ger said it did not look too serious and he expects to have Richarlison back before the season pauses in mid-November.

“For sure against United he is not available,” Conte said. “He is doing a scan and then we will see how much time he needs to recover. But … It’s not so serious. I hope for him to play other games with us before the World Cup.”

Conte replaced Richarlison with the midfielder Yves Bissouma against Everton with the score at 0-0 and switched from 3-4-3 to 3-5-2. With Bissouma in fine form, Spurs found the goals that they needed and Conte was expected to retain the system at Old Trafford — especially with another forward, Dejan Kulusevski, still struggling with a hamstring problem.

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Options for Spurs

But Conte said the priority was to stick with his favoured 3-4-3 with the fit-again Lucas Moura in his thoughts for one of the attacking roles alongside Harry Kane and Son Heung-min. Bryan Gil is another option and so, too, is pushing the wing-back Ivan Perisic further forward.

“Lucas can be a possibility, Gil can be a possibility, Perisic in a three, like a striker, is a possibility,” Conte said. “You know we like to play with a 3-4-3 with the three strikers and, if we can’t change, I prefer to continue to play with the 3-4-3. We worked a lot with this system. Lucas now is recovered from his injury, Gil is making big progress and then I have Perisic.”

On Kulusevski, Conte said: “We don’t know for the game against United. Sometimes there are situations that you have to go a bit slowly … If you accelerate the process, you risk only to worsen the situation. We need to have patience. We hope to have Deki in the squad very soon.” — Guardian