Antonio Conte has admitted that England captain Harry Kane is “really really tired” and struggled to get through a training session before Tottenham ’s Carabao Cup tie against Nottingham Forest.
Spurs were beaten 2-0 by Nottingham Forest on Wednesday night to exit the competition in the third round. Conte named a strong side for the midweek fixture, but couldn’t prevent a second successive defeat, following their 2-1 loss against Liverpool on Sunday.
Goals from Renan Lodi and Jesse Lingard secured the win for Forest as Conte made all five of his substitutions in the second half. Kane was taken off as part of a triple change in the 59th minute and the Spurs manager explained post-match that he would have rested him for the fixture if he had other options.
Asked if there was an injury concern for Kane, who will be named in Gareth Southgate's England squad for the at 2pm on Thursday, Conte replied: “No, it was a problem of tiredness. Really, really tired and yesterday (Tuesday) we had a soft training session and at one point he stopped himself to recover energy.
“But he’s okay, it’s only fatigue but it’s normal because Harry played every game. When you have a player like him it’s difficult to decide you don’t play with him.
“In this situation, also if I wanted to start with another player it was impossible because of injuries to Richarlison, [Dejan] Kulu[sevski] and Lucas Moura, from the start of the season.”
Conte was then asked if Kane was keen to start the match, despite his physical state and the proximity to the World Cup. He said: “Other players maybe they could tell me, ‘I’m tired and don’t want to play and help the team’. “When I speak, I have a group of players who are men and then good players, and because of this. Another could be selfish and think for himself because in one week they have to play the World Cup.
“Instead, Harry Kane showed to be a really good man. But the same for [Pierre-Emile] Hojbjerg and [Rodrigo] Bentancur and [Ivan] Perisic and [Eric] Dier, another who played a lot of games. We faced a really bad situation with injuries and arrived at the end in real difficulty. Now we try to rest, to recover injury.”
Tottenham will try to bounce back when they host Leeds United on Sunday in their final game before a five-week break for the World Cup. After an intense and difficult period, Conte is looking forward to the break.
“The performance, I have to be honest, I think maybe tonight the energy was really poor for us,” he said. “Don’t forget it was the 12th game in a really short period. The games we played in the past, every game was really really difficult and we lost a lot of mental energy in the Champions League and in the Premier League physical energy.”
