Roberto De Zerbi said that Tottenham are “not a team” after they opened their season with a humiliating 3-0 defeat away to Brentford. Spurs are looking to kick on after almost going down last season and are expected to spend more than £300m this summer but they were handed a rude awakening at the Gtech Community Stadium. Brentford outclassed the north Londoners and left De Zerbi rueing a lack of fight from his players, bemoaning his side’s physical conditioning and suggesting that the pre-season tour of Australia was less than ideal.
We are not in the right physical condition for a lot of reasons. Some players came back late from the World Cup. In Australia we don’t work in the right way but it is not excuses.
It is a normal situation when building a new project. I cannot lose confidence in my players. I believe in my players, my club, myself.
We have to improve quickly. We could fight stronger than we did today. We lost too many duels today.
We arrived second in the second balls. We didn’t win one second ball, one duel, one tackle.” Spurs handed debuts to Andy Robertson, Jan Paul van Hecke, Marcos Senesi, Mateus Fernandes and Sandro Tonali. They are close to strengthening their attack by signing Omar Marmoush and Savinho from Manchester City but De Zerbi needs to build a collective.
You can’t become a team from the transfer market on paper. You become a team when the players find a connection, a spirit, a soul. It’s a project.” De Zerbi pointed out that he was without Pedro Porro, Kevin Danso and Micky van de Ven.
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