Tottenham Hotspur have omitted £30m signing Mathys Tel from their Champions League squad for the league phase, with manager Thomas Frank forced to make difficult choices due to Uefa's homegrown player regulations. The club had too few locally trained players and too many foreign recruits, meaning six players had to be excluded from the 25-man 'A' list.
Tel, who joined from Bayern Munich in January on loan for £8.7m before the deal was made permanent in the summer for £30m, is a notable absentee. The 20-year-old winger 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 has been included in the squad.
Also left out are Dejan Kulusevski and Radu Dragusin, despite the possibility they could return from long-term injuries before the end of the league phase. Kulusevski underwent knee surgery in mid-May and is expected back around the turn of the year, while Dragusin ruptured his ACL in late January and may be out for another two months.
Other players omitted include James Maddison, who is out 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. Tottenham's Champions League campaign includes matches against Slavia Prague, Borussia Dortmund, and Eintracht Frankfurt in the coming months.
