London Evening Standard

Roberto De Zerbi has revealed how Dejan Kulusevski reacted upon being told he will be in the Tottenham matchday squad against Coventry.

It is nearly a year-and-a-half since Kulusevski last played a competitive match for Spurs, though he did take part in an 11-a-side training match at Hotspur Way during the international break.

A complicated kneecap injury has kept the Swede on the sidelines but, at last, a return to action is right around the corner.

Kulusevski missed out on a place in the Spurs squad against Manchester United last weekend, despite travelling to Old Trafford with the rest of his team-mates.

That will not be the case on Monday night when Tottenham host Coventry in a must-win Premier League game as De Zerbi has revealed the attacking midfielder has been cleared by the medical staff to be named among the substitutes.

“Yes, Kulusevski on the bench. We had a meeting with the medical staff, they gave the okay and it's great news,” the Spurs head coach said in the pre-match press conference on Sunday morning.

“I think it's one of the best news after Everton game last season, because Deki, he suffered too much. He deserves to feel emotion on the pitch.

“Yesterday, after the training, I spoke with him and I said to him, ‘Deki, look, I spoke with the medical staff, and they gave me the okay’ and he smiled like this.

"It's not football. I'm not speaking about football. Okay, he's a special player, but we are speaking about different things. He suffered a lot and his reaction was great.”

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Tottenham loanee Mikey Moore has revealed that he had offers to stay in England but wanted to follow in the footsteps of Jude Bellingham and Jadon Sancho by testing himself in the Bundesliga with Cologne.

Moore joined Cologne on a season-long loan this summer and has already underlined his importance to the German outfit by starting in their last three league games.

The hotly tipped 19-year-old had several loan offers on the table after a successful stint with Scottish giants Rangers last season, but chose to step out of his comfort zone and leave England.

Spurs boss Roberto De Zerbi considered keeping Moore, with the Englishman earning minutes off the bench against Brentford and Newcastle in the league before scoring and assisting in the 5-1 demolition of Charlton in the Carabao Cup.

Moore, though, was always expected to leave on loan, with Cologne long-term admirers, and he sealed a move away shortly after Spurs secured an £85million deal for Brazilian winger Savio.

“But for me, the conversations came down to me to pick a team, and I wanted to take myself a little bit out of my comfort zone to go and test myself in a big league and in one of the top five leagues.

“When we were speaking, everyone said that they think it'd be a really good experience for me to experience this type of football.

“I kind of made the decision early that I wanted to take myself out here, and now I just need to push on.”

Moore is looking to push on at Cologne in the hopes of securing regular first-team football back at Spurs, and the teenager admits the move was inspired by the success stories of Bellingham and Sancho, who left England for Borussia Dortmund.

Bellingham and Sancho became England internationals while out in Germany, and Moore says the trust that he has been shown early on was a major reason behind him joining Cologne.

“Over the years, you've seen so many young players come out here, and there's some obviously really, really good examples where some world-class players like Jude Bellingham, Sancho done really well.

“So, yeah, it's a really attractive place to play football, I think, especially for a young attacker. They put real trust in me to trust me to come in and even the amount of game time I've played so quickly on in my kind of Cologne career. It's been nice to have that trust of all the staff and the people in the club.

“So, yeah, I'm already happy with my decision. I think now I can really kick on and kind of make my own story or build my own path in German football.”

The NFL’s Washington Commanders hope to host the 2031 and 2033 Rugby World Cup finals at their new $4billion stadium, slated to open in 2030.

The United States will play host to both the 2031 men’s World Cup and the women’s edition two years later, and the bidding process to host matches is now under way.

Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital, is among the 27 host cities shortlisted by World Rugby, from which at most 14 will be selected.

The Commanders hope to break ground on the new stadium in March 2027, with the aim of it being ready to open in 2030.

The ultra-modern stadium, situated on the site of the now-demolished Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in south-east DC, will boast a capacity of over 75,000.

Sources close to the project told Standard Sport that Commanders executives hope it will become something of a national stadium for the US, with grand plans in place to host concerts and major sporting events beyond the bounds of American football. The 2031 Rugby World Cup final is seen as an ideal showpiece event.

It is understood that should the FIFA World Cup return to the US, the Commanders would again bid to host matches. President Donald Trump made clear following the 2026 edition that he would like to host it again as early as 2038.

In planning the stadium project, Commanders executives met with former Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy, seeking advice after he led the design and construction of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

Rugby remains a niche sport in the US, where it has struggled to crack a market dominated by the NFL and NBA.

A national league, Major League Rugby, was founded in 2017 with the aim of building a supporter base ahead of the 2031 World Cup, but it has fallen on hard times of late and now comprises just five teams.

One of those franchises, Old Glory, is based in DC, where a strong concentration of expats have developed a healthy grassroots network and passionate fanbase.

Test matches staged in the US have been rather more successful than the club game. South Africa’s defeat of New Zealand in September drew a sellout crowd of 68,173 supporters to Baltimore’s M&T Bank Stadium, making it the best-attended rugby match ever held in the US.

The construction of a brand-new stadium will see the Commanders move out of the much-maligned Northwest Stadium in rural Maryland, which bid to host World Cup matches in 2026 but was rejected by FIFA.

The Commanders are working to build a fanbase across Europe. In 2025, they took part in the first NFL match in Madrid as they were beaten in overtime by the Miami Dolphins at the Bernabeu.

They were then beaten by the Indianapolis Colts at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium earlier this month, in the franchise’s first London match since 2016. The Commanders say their outreach events staged in London the week of that match engaged over 5,000 fans.

Tottenham could find themselves in the throes of a third consecutive relegation battle if they fail to beat Coventry City on Monday night.

Roberto De Zerbi’s men have yet to win a match this season and sit 19th in the Premier League, with just three points from their first six games. Only Fulham, also winless, have fared worse.

The lower reaches of the table are not entirely unfamiliar to Tottenham, who finished 17th in each of the last two campaigns.

They left it until the final day of last season to confirm their safety, beating Everton at home to condemn West Ham to the drop.

After spending more than £300m in the summer transfer window, it was hoped this season might be different, but Spurs have been worryingly slow off the mark.

And, in the eyes of Alan Shearer, alarm bells will start ringing if they are unable to get a result against Coventry on Monday night.

"If they don't beat Coventry on Monday, then I think they'll be in a massive relegation battle,” the Geordie pundit told football.London. “I think that's how big a game it is."

The newly-promoted Sky Blues, helmed by Chelsea legend Frank Lampard, were not overly inspiring in the early days of the campaign, but sit 14th after beating Newcastle and Nottingham Forest in their last two outings.

Tottenham, though, will see the match as a ripe opportunity for them to pick up a first win of the campaign and escape the drop zone.

Last weekend’s 1-1 draw with Manchester United suggested Spurs were moving in the right direction, but Shearer is still concerned for the quality of their front line.

“They missed some big chances, Solanke scored one, but he missed three or four big chances, as did others, and I think when you look at the performance overall, I thought it was much improved, much more energy and much more structure to it.

"I've always said the time to worry is when you're not creating the chances and that wasn't the case at Old Trafford.

“They created plenty. So, if that was to keep on going, they could have a little bit of hope, but they desperately need that win. They need a win massively.”

As Tottenham’s wastefulness once again cost them dearly last weekend, former academy striker Will Lankshear continued his scintillating start to the season with another goal for Middlesbrough.

‘Can he do it on a cold, rainy Tuesday night in Stoke?’ is the ultimate cliche litmus test for a footballer’s ability, so you know Lankshear must have something special if he was able to answer that question at the first time of asking for his new club.

Signed from Spurs in the summer for a fee that could rise to £20million, Lankshear has taken the Championship by storm this season, putting his former club on watch as they search desperately for a consistent source of goals.

Midway through October, Lankshear is already in double figures for goals across all competitions, and looks set to propel Middlesbrough’s Premier League promotion push.

Manchester City superstar Erling Haaland is the only other player to reach that number so far this term across all of English football’s top four divisions.

The 21-year-old’s form has taken plenty by surprise, but Spurs were always aware of the talent Lankshear possessed, and so they hedged their bets when negotiating his sale this summer.

Tottenham focused on maximising player sales from the club’s academy during the window, but with those players they believed could push on and secure big-money moves in the future, they included a matching-rights clause.

Lankshear and his former Spurs, now Middlesbrough, teammate Ashley Phillips were two of the players they were keen not to lose complete control over, alongside teenage winger Tynan Thompson, who joined Manchester United.

With matching rights in place for both Phillips and Lankshear, Tottenham will have the right to equal any future bid that Middlesbrough accepts for either player, with Spurs then given priority to finalise a deal ahead of any rival suitor.

If Lankshear keeps scoring at his current rate, then Tottenham will no doubt be interested in taking him back to the club.

But even if they decline to use their matching rights, they still hold a 20 per cent sell-on clause should the England youth international move from Middlesbrough to another club.

Given Spurs’ struggles in front of goal, Lankshear’s development will be watched closely. Tottenham are determined to ensure this is not the one that gets away.

Dejan Kulusevski could be included in a Tottenham matchday squad for the first time in nearly 18 months when Coventry visit on Monday night.

Kulusevski has been out of action since May 2025 with a complicated kneecap injury that required two surgeries and more than 500 days on the sidelines.

The Swedish playmaker is, though, edging closer to a return to action and was part of the travelling squad as Spurs rescued a late 1-1 draw away to Manchester United last weekend.

While not part of the matchday squad at Old Trafford, Kulusevski has continued to train with the rest of the first team since then and travelled to Marbella for the club’s warm-weather training camp this week.

With an extended break between games, Monday’s clash against Coventry looks like a good opportunity to reintegrate Kulusevski and boost morale as Spurs search for their first Premier League win of the season.

Kulusevski may not be ready to make a substantial impact on the pitch, but one player head coach Roberto De Zerbi will hope he can rely on from the start is right-back and vice-captain Pedro Porro.

Porro has been out for nearly a month with a hamstring injury suffered during Spurs’ 3-2 defeat by Aston Villa.

The World Cup winner travelled to Spain over the international break to see a specialist to help his recovery, but was not included in the matchday squad against United, though he did travel to Old Trafford alongside Kulusevski.

Spurs will definitely be without midfielder Rodrigo Bentancur after he was sent off for headbutting United defender Luke Shaw.

De Zerbi raised eyebrows by praising Bentancur for showing character, with the Uruguayan’s absence meaning that more changes are now needed in midfield.

The major selection decision De Zerbi will be weighing up is whether to hand James Maddison his first Premier League start since April 2025.

The England midfielder has been in and out of the side this season after suffering a shoulder fracture during Spurs’ 3-0 defeat by Brentford on the opening weekend.

Maddison made a positive impression off the bench against United, and he could now be trusted from the start against Coventry, with Tottenham in need of creative inspiration.

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