ONE TOUCH SUMMARY
- De Zerbi needs sustained time on the training ground with his Tottenham squad to build a proper team.
- Tottenham's international break interrupts that work, arriving at the worst possible moment for the boss.
- Tony Pulis, writing for BBC Sport, outlines the factors making De Zerbi's task at Spurs difficult.
ONE TOUCH INSIGHT
Tony Pulis has landed on the thing Spurs cannot buy, and it is not a transfer. De Zerbi is trying to build a team rather than patch one, and that work happens midweek, on the grass, with the whole squad in front of him. An international break takes precisely that away.
Pulis's point is about repetition, not whiteboard theory. A coach installing a distinct method needs the same players making the same movements, week after week, until the shape is instinct rather than instruction. A fortnight of national-team fixtures hands those players to other coaches, other systems, other loading plans, then returns them to a project that was mid-sentence.
That is why this break costs more now than it would in a season with a settled idea. Spurs are paying for the interruption in the currency De Zerbi values most.
De Zerbi's first selection after the internationals tells you whether his squad looks like it has had two weeks together or two weeks apart.
WHY IT MATTERS
It tests whether a coach known for a distinctive, demanding style can impose it without uninterrupted training time, and it frames early judgments of his Tottenham tenure as premature.
TACTICAL FIT
De Zerbi's approach depends on rehearsed build-up patterns and positional rotations, which require repetition on the training pitch rather than short international windows, so broken weeks slow Tottenham's tactical integration.
THE DEBATE
Should De Zerbi be judged before he gets a proper run on the training ground?
AI-assisted · generated from BBC Sport reporting, not editor reviewed
