Tottenham Hotspur

Thomas Frank was looking at the ‘bigger perspective’ of a full week of preparation after a 2-0 win against Reading in our pre-season opener on Saturday.

In his first game in charge, Thomas fielded different starting XIs in each half, 22 players with 45 minutes under their belts, including first appearances for Luka Vuskovic and Mo Kudus.

Indeed, both newcomers caught the eye in the second half, Luka with an assist for Will Lankshear’s opener and then a lovely strike for the second goal, while Mo gave fans an early show of his explosive running and ability to make things happen. "He was exciting to watch," said Thomas.

Asked if it was a case of boxes ticked for a first pre-season game, Thomas, speaking to SPURSPLAY, reflected: “Yes, lots of boxes ticked, and if we look in a bigger perspective, it’s been a good week, very tough and intense for the lads, so couple of good things, we’ve got through the week, touch wood, no injuries, everyone in a better, physical place, all the players got a good 45 minutes here, plus a good run after. The fitness box ticked, and it’s always important to keep a clean sheet, that’s very important if you want to win football matches, so good aspects in that. I think it’s good we scored two goals from set pieces, something we’ve been working hard on. There were elements in the game I’m happy with, elements of the high pressure, elements of the counter-press, so when we’ve lost it, we can bank teams in, elements of having enough players in the box… but there are also bits we’d like to do better, but that’s normal.”

The players certainly wanted to keep that clean sheet, and threw themselves in for blocks - as worked on in training last week - as Reading pushed for a late consolation. Guglielmo Vicario also kept the hosts at bay with a couple of fine saves, notably touching aside Ashqar Ahmed's low drive, the final effort of the game.

“That’s why you saw the blocking drill earlier in the week, everything is linked,” added Thomas. “We want to attack, we want to be brave but, unfortunately, we’re facing an opponent sometimes who also wants to attack, and when they are attacking, we want to defend well and put our bodies on the line when we have to.”

The Thomas Frank era kicks-off at Reading on Saturday (3pm) and our Head Coach has told us what he’s looking for in our first pre-season action against the League One side.

First up, Thomas explained that we’ll put out two 11s, playing 45 minutes each - and he reported in his pre-match press conference that both Heung-Min Son and Cuti Romero will be involved.

Speaking to us on Friday afternoon, Thomas said: “We will look, first of all, for a good performance, with two even teams out there, playing 45-45, and there be runs after. It's been a tough week for them, so this will be another. It will be the first 45 minutes into the legs, the system, the principles. The perfect thing is a good performance where we’re ticking a lot of those principles we try to integrate.”

Friday represented day 14 of pre-season, and with less than a month before we take on PSG in the UEFA Super Cup (13 August, 8pm) quickly followed by our Premier League opener at home to Burnley (16 August, 3pm), Thomas was asked what information he and his coaching team were getting into the players in these first weeks together.

“We like to get all our principles into them, all phases of the game - that's everything from defending the box to attacking the box,” he said. “We need to be really good in both boxes to try to achieve something. That also goes with the middle pressure, phase two, all the principles we try to get in - of course, there's a lot of information."

Watch | Thomas' first press conference

Thomas Frank has confirmed that Cristian Romero and Heung-Min Son will both play against Reading on Saturday.

We kick-off our pre-season campaign this weekend as we make the trip to the Select Car Leasing Stadium to take on the Royals - and all the action will be live on SPURSPLAY!

And Thomas has provided a key piece of team news ahead of the game by confirming the involvement of both Heung-Min Son and Cristian Romero.

The pair, who have been hard at work so far in training, have impressed our new Head Coach with the standards they have shown since he came in the doors and now he has revealed that both will play against the Royals, with each getting 45 minutes and the captain's armband.

"They are two top players. Both have trained well and set the standards. Both will play tomorrow," he said in his pre-match press conference.

"They train well. I’m very impressed by them. We will play two 45 minutes tomorrow and Son and Romero will be the two captains."

Thomas Frank has provided an update on four of our players ahead of our pre-season opener at Reading tomorrow.

We head to the Select Car Leasing Stadium on Saturday afternoon to play our first game under new Head Coach Thomas (3pm kick-off) - and you can watch all the action live on SPURSPLAY!

And ahead of that first outing, Thomas has been able to provide us with an update on four players who we ended last season without as all four were on the sidelines after picking up injuries.

Lucas Bergvall, Dejan Kulusevski, James Maddison and Radu Dragusin all missed the end of the season run in which culminated in us lifting the Europa League trophy on that glorious night in Bilbao.

Now, just two months on, all four have their eyes set on returning to action - although some are closer than others...

Speaking to us following his first press conference as Head Coach, Thomas said: "Lucas Bergvall has been very good on the grass, he's trained every session and looks good. I'm very happy with that."

"James Maddison has been doing rehab, but in the last couple of sessions he's been doing part sessions (with the rest of the squad), so that's also a positive. He's getting closer.

"Radu and Deki are a little further away. So, Lucas, fine, no problem. Maddison is getting closer."

Live Coverage: Reading vs Spurs  Tottenham Hotspur

Kicking off our pre-season campaign this weekend with a trip to face the Royals at the Select Car Leasing Stadium (kick-off 3pm UK), recent defensive arrivals Luka Vuskovic and Kota Takai will temporarily take numbers 80 and 81 respectively. Meanwhile, Mohammed Kudus – who joined us from West Ham United last week - will wear the number 20 shirt. As announced last Thursday, this is Mo’s assigned squad number for the 2025/26 campaign.

The rest of our players will wear the numbers they donned last season.*

Supporters should note, however, that the numbers worn by our players during pre-season may not be representative of their finalised squad numbers for 2025/26. We shall provide further information on this in due course.

The Thomas Frank era kicks-off at Reading on Saturday, and you can watch all the action via SPURSPLAY - our video streaming platform.

SPURSPLAY is the home of our live and on-demand video content and the home of all of our five pre-season matches this summer - including the first north London derby to take place outside of the UK when we face Arsenal in Hong Kong.

The action starts nearer to home as we take the trip down the M4 to Reading's Select Car Leasing Stadium this Saturday (19 July) where Thomas will take charge of the team for the first time.

We kick-off at 3pm - look out for the SPURSPLAY stream starting from 2.25pm with our team back in place - presenter and Spurs fan, Ben Haines, legendary striker Clive Allen and commentator Rob Daly.

Here is our pre-season schedule in full...

On the eve of the first Test match of the British Lions' tour of Australia in Brisbane on Saturday, we can reveal that Barry John, one of rugby union's all-time greats, was a Spurs fan.

Nicknamed 'The King' by media in New Zealand after his performances against the All Blacks in the famous Lions tour of 1971, Barry's family were visitors to Tottenham Hotspur Stadium last season, where they told us that Spurs very much runs in the family - started by Barry - and how he loved to watch fellow Welsh great, double-winner and Spurs legend, Cliff Jones, in his trophy-laden heyday.

"Dad always told us back in day, when he was growing up in Cefneithin, and they were all watching football, or listening to it on the radio more likely in a mining community, he just loved Tottenham as a team and obviously you had Cliff Jones, Terry Medwin... there's there's a big connection between Wales and Tottenham, always has been, and dad loved the way they played," explained his son, David.

"As his son, the first team I picked out was Tottenham - everyone follows their parents, don't they? For me, it was Gary Mabbutt and that era, and then we got Gareth Bale, another Wales legend!

"We've always followed Spurs as a family. My niece is over here from Perth and is a mad Spurs. She's in university in Texas, playing for the soccer team at a good standard. We love the team, always love Spurs and dad did as well. It's beautiful to be here."

Barry sadly passed away in February, 2024. He didn't get to visit Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in person, but he was at White Hart Lane back on 1 November, 1986, for a First Division match against Wimbledon, as David explained - he's kept the tickets from that day, almost 29 years ago.

"These are the tickets from the last time we were here, at White Hart Lane. These are my dad's tickets - West Upper, £11. I think the story is that Steve Perryman knew dad, because he played in pro-am charity games and I think we got these through Steve.

"The new stadium... he would always watch games on TV and say, 'top notch that stadium, I wouldn't have minded playing there'. He would have been knocked out by it."

Capped 25 times by Wales (1966-72) and five times by the British Lions, Barry cemented his reputation in the Lions victorious tour of New Zealand in 1971. Lions won the series 2-1 - he scored 30 of their 48 points over the four Tests and a record 191 points across the tour.

He was third in the 1971 BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award, beaten by winner Princess Anne and runner-up George Best. He was also one of the inaugural inductees of the International Rugby Hall of Fame in 1997 and in 1999, inducted into the Welsh Sports Hall of Fame. In 2015 he was inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame.

Bringing things completely up to date - as the Lions prepare to faces the Aussies in the first test in Brisbane on Saturday - Barry was recently named on a Lions Top 10: Icons list on BBC's Rugby Union Weekly podcast, by a panel including Matt Dawson, Jamie Roberts and Chris Jones, the BBC rugby union correspondent, underlining his impact at the very pinnacle of the sport.

It left one question for the John family - what's it like to be the family of one of the best-ever rugby players?

" Dad was a very, very humble, so man, so things like this... he just loved sport," said his daughter, Lucy. "His gift was to always say to people, 'enjoy what you do, if you're playing rugby, whatever you're doing, just enjoy it' and he he just he was just a gentle, humble miner's son who just happened to be... (one of the best rugby players of all-time?)... yes, but you wouldn't know!"

David added: "I was born in 1976, dad retired in 1972, so I never saw him play, but obviously I've seen all the footage with the Lions and he was a remarkable player. It's just fun, isn't it? In Wales, we say it's a lot of 'hwyl', a lot of happiness and joy. This is hwyl. It's such a good moment for all of us."

Our Under-21s will continue their pre-season campaign with a trip to National League side Boreham Wood on Saturday (3pm UK).

The match represents the second outing of the summer for Wayne Burnett’s charges following last week’s 5-2 defeat at League Two outfit Bromley.

Our youngsters are no strangers to Boreham Wood’s Meadow Park home ground – our north London rivals Arsenal use the venue to stage their Premier League 2 home matches, with our last visit back in October proving particularly memorable as we came back from 2-0 down at half-time to defeat the Gunners 5-2.

Callum Olusesi and Tyrese Hall were among our scorers that day, with Hall also netting against Bromley last week.

Amanda Nildén's Sweden lost out in a dramatic penalty shootout as England came out on top in the spot-kicks to progress to the semi-final of Euro 2025.

In a thrilling quarter-final tie in Zurich, the defender was deployed as a late substitute in extra time, but she couldn’t prevent her nation from crashing out as the Lionesses won 3-2 in the shootout.

Sweden, who topped Group C with three wins out of three, got off to the perfect start as Kosovare Asllani opened the scoring inside two minutes before Stina Blackstenius doubled their lead on 25 minutes to put them in control of the contest.

However, England fought back in remarkable style as two goals in a two-minute spell - from Lucy Bronze and Michelle Agyemang - put Sarina Wiegman’s side on level terms with nine minutes left on the clock and dramatically took the match to extra time.

It remained 2-2 for the additional 30 minutes, meaning a penalty shootout was needed to decide who will face Italy in the semi-final. And, after 14 spot-kicks, Smilla Holmberg blazed her spot-kick over the bar as England won 3-2.

Amanda, who made her second appearance in Switzerland, was our last remaining player at the tournament.