Tottenham release full squad list for US tour

Tottenham will bring — almost — all of their heaviest hitters as they embark on a three match preseason tour of the United States this week and next.

First up, Tottenham will take on Paris Saint Germain in Orlando before traveling north for a midweek match against Roma in New Jersey. The tour will conclude with a clash against Premier League rivals Manchester City in Nashville.

These matches represent the first real preseason tests for Spurs. Prior to this, the first team were slowly assembling after summer holidays and only just beginning to train. A squad composed of Academy kids and fringe players beat Leyton Orient last week in a closed friendly, but that hardly served as a indicator of what to expect in the coming season.

The squad Pochettino selected to bring across the Atlantic, however, does. Virtually all of last season’s starting XI are present, including Golden Boot winner Harry Kane and PFA Young Player of the Year Dele Alli.

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Those two plus the likes of Christian Eriksen, Toby Alderweireld, Hugo Lloris and Victor Wanyama suggest that Tottenham are prepared to take these coming friendlies quite seriously.

There remain some notable omissions here however.

Kyle Walker, of course, was only just sold to Manchester City for a record fee last week. Kieran Trippier, fresh off of signing a new contract with Spurs, will cover for him.

On the opposite flank one might expect to see Danny Rose, but the England international is still recovering from the injury that forced him to miss much of last season’s latter half. Ben Davies will cover for him.

Heung-min Son and Érik Lamela both remain other with known injuries, the former having broken his arm while on duty with South Korea and the latter still recovering from surgeries to both of his hips.

The absence of Moussa Sissoko — supposedly due to “virus” — is a bit more suspect. It’s widely assumed that the club is prepared to part with their record signing after a dismal first season with the club. Therefore it only makes sense that he would not be included in preseason activities.

It is worth mentioning that the same assumptions could be made about both Kevin Wimmer and Georges-Kévin Nkoudou, yet both players are among those traveling to the US. Whether that speaks to Pochettino’s belief that they still have roles to play is hard to say. It could just be that they lack concrete options for those players at present.

A more straight-forward optimistic inclusion is Harry Winks. The Spurs Academy graduate suffered a terrible injury in April that ruled him out for the remainder of his first full season with the first team. Prior to that he showed immense promise, however, and was widely believed to be auditioning for a bigger role in 2017/18.

The 21-year-old showed up early to Spurs’ preseason training in order to return to fitness quick enough to make this tour as well as stay in Pochettino’s reckoning. He will hope to get at least one start before returning to England.

Next: Tottenham extend Kieran Trippier's contract until 2022

Youngsters and current Academy student pad out the remainder of the squad, several of whom haven’t so much as trained with the first team before. We’ll explore who those players are and what to expect from them in a separate piece.