Antonio Conte ‘confident’ Spurs can appeal Uefa’s ‘unfair’ Europa Conference League ruling

Antonio Conte has accused Uefa of showing a lack of respect towards Tottenham Hotspur as he railed against the decision to eliminate his team from Europe.

Conte wants Tottenham to appeal against Uefa’s ruling, which he described as “incredible” and “unfair”, and called for his side’s European fate to be settled on the pitch rather than in the courts.

Tottenham’s lawyers were on Tuesday night considering whether to take an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, with Conte making it clear that he did not accept Uefa’s decision and wanted it to be fought.

Earlier this week Uefa awarded Rennes a 3-0 victory after a Covid-19 outbreak prevented Tottenham from fulfilling the fixture on the scheduled date. That meant Tottenham were knocked out of the Europa Conference League at the group stage.

“It is very difficult to understand this decision,” Conte said. “Tottenham started to play in this competition from this summer and now it is unfair to tell us, ‘thank you very much, you went here, here and here, but now you lose 3-0’. Because why? We honoured this competition to play and to go around Europe. But now Uefa is taking a decision that I do not like. It is lacking respect for our job. It is not fair.”

Conte said his players were “very, very disappointed” with the ruling and added that he felt highly confident Tottenham would win any appeal.

Conte’s feelings on the matter appear to be stronger than those of the club hierarchy, with Tottenham saying in a statement earlier this week that they had to “accept this ruling” and their focus was now on the competitions they remain in.

Speaking in his press conference ahead of tonight’s League Cup quarter-final against West Ham United, Conte went as far as to suggest that “personal interests” could have been behind Uefa’s ruling.

Conte said: “This decision is not fair. All the world knows that we are facing a big problem like Covid. We did not play, it was not our fault. [It was] because we had many, many players with Covid and the Government decided to stop our training sessions, to stop our training centre.

“Honestly, for me, for the players, for the club, for our fans, it is incredible the decision that Uefa wanted to take.” On the issue of appealing, Conte added: “There is another step. We are very very confident that in another step, they will take a normal decision.

“We deserve to play for qualification on the pitch. Not on the court. I’m very disappointed with Uefa.”

Meanwhile, Conte called on Dele Alli to show he deserved to stay at Tottenham beyond the January transfer window, challenging the midfielder to build on his fine showing against Liverpool this weekend.

“He has to continue to show desire to stay here and want to continue to stay here and to deserve, especially, to stay here,” Conte said.