MY ACCOUNT
Antonio Conte does not want Tottenham “to be silent” in the wake of recent decisions he feels have gone against his team.
The Spurs boss was infuriated twice in the last week, firstly by Newcastle United’s opening goal in their 2-1 win at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium last Sunday being awarded despite Conte’s belief that scorer Callum Wilson obstructed goalkeeper Hugo Lloris.
Then in the final seconds of Wednesday’s 1-1 home draw with Sporting CP in the Champions League, a Harry Kane goal was disallowed for offside after a lengthy VAR check, which enraged Conte so much he was shown a red card for his reaction.
“I spoke with the sporting director [Fabio Paratici] and also I sent a message to [chairman] Daniel Levy,” Conte said at a press conference on Friday. “Also after what happened against Newcastle, we spoke about this, because there is an image very, very clear that it was a foul.
“Sometimes you can accept and say: ‘OK, they made a mistake, we have to move on.’ But at the same time I think that sometimes you have to try to go to speak and to protect your club. I have to protect my club and the club has to protect itself. To be silent is not good.
“From the start of the season, I always said that I don’t want to comment on every decision. And what happened? Every decision has been a disaster from the start, between the Premier League and the Champions League. All I ask is to pay a bit of attention and to try to have the same evaluation for every team.”
The draw with Sporting leaves Spurs with a crucial final group game away to Marseille on Tuesday, and Conte admitted that is the main focus for his team, despite a Premier League clash at Bournemouth taking place before then on Saturday.
“In the Premier League, we have a lot of games to play in front of us,” he said. “In the Champions League we want to have more games to play but there is a final on Tuesday and this is the difference between the game tomorrow in the Premier League and a game in the Champions League.
“In the Premier League you can have time to recover. In the Champions League we are going to play a final. For this reason my decision is to try make the best decision to understand very well who are the players who are really tired because I don’t want to take risks.
“For us, it is a final on Tuesday. I try to make my best selection tomorrow because we also want to have a good result against Bournemouth.”
