Thomas Tuchel and Antonio Conte’s confrontation at the end of the Tottenham Chelsea game was already two weeks ago now, and we’re pretty ready to move on, but the disciplinary hearing is still ongoing.
Today, Football.London revealed the written explanation from each manager about what had happened with the run-in at full time after Spurs scored a late equaliser.
It was fascinating to see how they both saw the handshake that launched a thousand articles. Tuchel’s explanation for what happened was as follows:
“At the end of the match I approached Mr Conte to shake his hand as an act of sportsmanship. Mr Conte took my hand but did not look at me and I considered his demeanour to be a sign of disrespect towards me,” Tuchel wrote.
“I therefore held on to his hand as he walked past me and told him to look me in the eyes when he shakes my hand.”
It’s pretty silly once you have it written down like this, hopefully both will think about that before they pull something similar.
In any case, both will be fined, and Tuchel looks like he will spend a game in the stands as a punishment. That seems fair enough – we’re just desperate to move on and start thinking about more important things, like winning games.
The guy needs psychiatric help. Gobby loud mouthed thug. Six matches would be fair.