Tottenham will not join their Premier League rivals in establishing a warm-weather base during the World Cup after being unable to find a facility to match their Hertfordshire training centre.
The other members of the Premier League’s so-called big six will spend part of the six-week break overseas, with Arsenal and Liverpool set to train in Dubai, Manchester City and Chelsea in Abu Dhabi, and Manchester United in Spain.
Many clubs have opted to train in the Middle East so their international players can quickly and easily return after the World Cup in Qatar.
Spurs, however, have bucked the trend after taking their time to decide on a plan for the winter break, only to find no available facilities to match the club’s state-of-the-art everyday training base, Hotspur Way.
Antonio Conte will be left with a skeleton squad during the tournament but Dejan Kulusevski, Lucas Moura, Clement Lenglet and Matt Doherty are among the players who will not be representing their countries in Qatar.
Spurs are planning up to three behind-closed-doors friendlies during the period, before they resume the season on Boxing Day against London rivals Brentford.
Asked if he was frustrated that Spurs had been unable to find a warm-weather base, Conte said: "You know well that for every situation, every decision we take, you have to understand if there is the possibility to do it. In these circumstances, the club, we didn’t find the right solution, we didn’t find the right place to go. I can give my idea, my opinion, but then the final decision is always from the club.
"We told the players not involved in the World Cup that they could stay at home," Conte added. "Instead, at the last moment many national teams decided to play two friendly games.
"Now after the game against Leeds, the players that go to the World Cup they go with the national team. The others will continue to have training sessions and then to go with the national teams to have friendly games. Then they’ll have days off to recover.
"Before our idea was to try to find a solution to go away from London and to go to stay in a place with sun, but in the end it was difficult to find this type of solution for the club and for this reason we continue to stay here, having training sessions and use our training ground."
Hugo Lloris, Cristian Romero, Eric Dier, Ben Davies, Ivan Perisic, Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, Rodrigo Bentancur, Pape Matar Sarr, Heung-min Son, Harry Kane, Richarlison have all been called up by their countries for the World Cup.
