Tottenham Hotspur Fielding International Team During “Break”

While the football calendar refers to the next two weeks as a break, the reality for Tottenham Hotspur is that very few of their players are going to get any break at all.

Part of having both an international team and one made of top-notch players is having to allow your investments go off one a month to serve their respective countries. This is not the US National Guard, rather this is the fast-paced world of National Team Football and Tottenham Hotspur have their fair share of players who participate.

For Tottenham Hotspur, this is a double-edged sword, as the growing fanbase in places like South Korea or the Ivory Coast are part of the return to the club on the investment of letting starts like Heung-Min Son and Serge Aurier go captain their countries.  What makes this especially difficult is the fact that Spurs have enough players participating with their countries that Tottenham could be a country unto itself.

From our efforts to catalog who is participating this ‘break’ Tottenham originally had 16 first team players – not including anyone on loan – selected to play for their country. This number of 16 has already been reduced by one, as Steven Bergwijn has been sent home or pulled out – depending on translation – of the Netherlands squad for fitness concerns.

Of those 15 players, we have written a bit on the idea of Gareth Bale playing for Wales and like Jose Mourinho, we are quite nervous. Then there is the Pierre-Emile Højbjerg situation, where his country is on a travel ban, so he would have to quarantine making any travel there unrealistic. He is slated to meet up with his teammates for their third and final match after training at Hotspur Way.

Besides those mentioned, Tottenham have three players going out for England – Harry Kane, Harry Winks, and Eric Dier. Likewise, there are now three Tottenham players going to serve Wales with Joe Rodon joining Gareth Bale and Ben Davies. Matt Doherty will be going to serve the Republic of Ireland alone, but Spurs may just be a year or two away from having three Irish internationals as well with Parrott out on loan and Dennis Cirkin working on making the senior squad.

Son Heung Min, Giovanni Lo Celso, and Davinson Sanchez all have considerably further to travel as Son goes to Korea and Lo Celso and Sanchez both head to South America for World Cup qualifiers. That gives Tottenham 16 called and 15 looking to be active going into the ‘break’. If we start going into the youth team and the players on loan, we could fill out a complete bench – maybe not a Europa League bench but a 7-man Premier League bench for sure.

The bottom line is these matches are important for the players and their respective countries. We know many of the players are stars and will play for 90 minutes. As fans, we just hope our best players stay healthy and out of trouble. Let us hope that is what the next two weeks brings.