Tottenham Hotspur have omitted Mathys Tel from their squad for the Champions League league phase, with the £30m signing unable to secure a place due to Uefa's homegrown player rules. Head coach Thomas Frank was forced to exclude six players from his 25-man 'A' list, as the club has too few locally trained players and an excess of foreign recruits.
Tel, who joined from Bayern Munich in January on an initial loan with a £30m permanent clause, appears to have been a casualty of the deadline day loan signing of Randal Kolo Muani from Paris Saint-Germain, another non-locally trained player who made the cut. Dejan Kulusevski and Radu Dragusin also missed out, despite potentially returning from long-term injuries during the group stage.
Other absentees include James Maddison, who is sidelined for the entire league phase with an anterior cruciate ligament rupture, new signing Kota Takai, and Yves Bissouma, who is out of favour and linked with a move to Turkey. Kulusevski underwent knee surgery in mid-May and was expected to be out until the turn of the year, while Dragusin ruptured his ACL in late January and faces another two months on the sidelines.
Tottenham's Champions League campaign includes home matches against Slavia Prague on 9 December and Borussia Dortmund on 20 January, followed by an away trip to Eintracht Frankfurt on 28 January.
