December 15, (THEWILL) – The Premier League match between Tottenham Hotspur and Leicester City will take place as scheduled on Thursday night,despite both clubs demanding that the match be postponed.
Spurs’ previous Premier League match, against Brighton and Hove Albion, was postponed due to a number of positive cases among the team’s players and personnel. For the same reason, the club’s UEFA Europa League match versus Rennes was cancelled for the same reason, as THEWILL reported.
Due to a rise in COVID-19 cases and illness in the team, Leicester were without seven players for last week’s Europa League defeat by Napoli.
The Premier League has already postponed two matches this season due to COVID-19, but both Antonio Conte and Brendan Rodgers said on Wednesday that their clubs’ appeals to have the match rescheduled have been turned down.
The Premier League announced new measures this week to combat the spread of the virus after a record 42 players and club staff tested positive.
“We’ve still got a number of players out,” Rodgers said. “We’ve got nine players out through COVID and other medical issues. In terms of COVID, we’re still where we were.”
About seeking a postponement, the Leicester manager said: “We’ve looked at that. Unfortunately for us, we weren’t granted any dispensation, which was disappointing. We’ve wanted to support the measures, but when we wanted support for the extreme situation we were in, it’s disappointing not to get the support.
“We were touch and go for the Newcastle game. We’ve picked up a couple of injuries as well, that are COVID related because we can’t rotate the team. We’ll put out the best team we can.”
Conte was also asked if he had requested that Thursday’s game be cancelled, and he said: “Yeah, but for me it’s very difficult to speak about this topic. For sure, the Premier League didn’t want to postponed the game against Leicester, maybe because we have to play against Burnley and Brighton. We postponed two games before. I can understand, we can understand.
“On the other hand, I think we deserve to play our chance against Rennes to go to the next group. We don’t find a good solution between UEFA and Premier League, why Tottenham has to pay for this? It’s not fair we have to pay for a situation that isn’t our fault?.
“I understand if we did something wrong but in this way, for the club, the players, the staff, it’s very difficult to understand what’s happening.”
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Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
