Ivan Perisic and Matt Doherty are struggling for fitness according to Tottenham Hotspur boss Antonio Conte.
Tottenham took on Roma on Saturday night with the two teams meeting in Haifa for a pre-season friendly.
This was Tottenham’s last pre-season game before the Premier League start and Conte won’t be happy with a defeat.
Roger Ibanez scored the only goal of the game to give Tottenham a 1-0 defeat ahead of their big Premier League opener against Southampton.
Ivan Perisic and Matt Doherty are struggling for fitness
It’s unclear whether this was Tottenham’s planned starting XI to face Southampton.
Harry Kane, Dejan Kulusevski and Son Heung-min all started in attack whilst established first-teamers Hugo Lloris, Eric Dier and Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg were included too.
At wing back, Conte went with Ivan Perisic on the left and Matt Doherty on the right.
Perisic has been recovering from a calf injury sustained at the end of his time with Inter Milan.
Doherty missed the final six weeks of the season through injury and has been coming back through pre-season.
The Irishman was the only outfield player in the squad against Rangers who didn’t play a single minute.
Conte did though put Doherty into the starting XI against Roma, giving him a chance to shine.
After the game, Conte told Football London that he feels both Perisic and Doherty are ‘struggling a lot’ with their fitness.
Conte suggested that Tottenham need to have patience with both players because they aren’t quite at their best.
The Italian hailed Perisic, highlighting that he will be an ‘important player’ but still isn’t the Perisic he knows and loves.
Conte added that Doherty is struggling fitness-wise and again called for patience, maybe suggesting that the duo won’t be starting against Southampton next week.
“First of all, the most important thing is that all the players, except Oliver Skipp, have trained and trained well,” said Conte. “In this moment we have two players, Ivan Perisic and Doherty, they have to continue to work and reach the peak of fitness because after a long injury they are struggling a lot. We need to have patience. But today it was positive to give them a lot of time to play again for Matthew and Ivan. Bissouma is also a player who has to come into our idea of football.”
“[Perisic] is an important player because he’s really good. He moves forward, good in one v ones, and then he can use both feet and he was before a winger which us why he’s good in one v one. But he has to continue to work because at this moment he’s not the Ivan Perisic I know. That is normal though, but I’m happy because he reduced the time to recover from his injury.”
“It was the same for Matthew, for Doherty. I hope to see him like last season and now he’s working and he’s struggling. We need to have patience. We need to give time for these players to be really fit,” he added.
Receive exclusive football transfer news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
