It’s a slow news day with the international break ending and Tottenham not playing until the late game on Saturday at West Ham, but there’s a bit of new news that might be of interest to some as Spurs prepare to open their Champions League campaign next week. UEFA has apparently tweaked its rules and will allow teams playing in its three European competitions — Champions League, Europa League, Europa Conference League — to replace one player for the league phase who is out with a long-term injury.
This is actually a pretty common sense thing to do, and it could benefit a team like Spurs that has struggled with injuries in recent seasons. For example, if a player — and I hesitate to speak this into existence — like Richarlison were to go down with an ACL or knee injury by week 6 of the campaign, Spurs would be able to replace him with someone like Mathys Tel, whom Spurs had to leave out of the squad due to homegrown/club-trained reasons. It makes a lot of sense for all clubs, but could be a real boon for clubs with shortened squads like Tottenham.
I’m not used to UEFA making rational, popular decisions about its competitions, so this is a bit weird for me, but hats off to them for making what should be a useful and popular tweak to its competition format. Hopefully Tottenham will never, ever have to use it, but it’s a nice thing to know about in case it does.