Emerson Royal has been making every effort to adjust to Antonio Conte‘s wing-backs system.
The Brazilian and his management group, which is run by his father Emerson Zulu, have spent £800,000 on products and services to enhance his performance.
To prepare the defender for those grueling runs up and down the field, he purchased a hyperbaric oxygen chamber!
He even ordered the scouting report of Achraf Hakimi, a star player for Paris Saint-Germain who excelled under Conte as a wing-back at Inter Milan, in order to better understand the Italian’s style of play.
All this effort, however, has not gotten the performances he desired. The Spurs’ full-back has been producing bad to average performances for Tottenham and has been subject to fans’ anger for a good while now.
His game against Arsenal made it worse, and his recent actions definitely did not help.
In the 9 PL games he has played, the team has conceded 9 times, and the player has received a yellow and a red card for his troubles.
Yesterday, in the Champions League group match, Spurs drew 1-1 with Sporting in what was a very tight affair between the two teams.
The goal from the London club came very late, in the 80th minute, which meant that Spurs were under pressure and trailing Sporting for the majority of the game.
After the leveler though, Spurs had newfound fuel and drive to win the game. They even scored, which was subsequently ruled out due to offside. Conte was even sent off in the aftermath. And most of the post-match chatter remains around this injury-time event.
But in the midst of all this, at the 86th minute, was Emerson Royal attempting to play a no-look pass to Bryan Gil.
The commentator here makes the clearest statement of all – if you’re going to do it, make sure you have the quality to do it.
Emerson Royal’s talent and quality aside, the whole reasoning behind the pass is extremely questionable. Why would he even attempt that? What would he risk that good attack for? What’s going on in his mind? It is not like the team is 2 or 3 goals up and comfortable.
Before we go on to how furious the Spurs fans were, just take a look at Antonio Conte. He is visibly angry with the decision, and is pointing to his brain almost as if to say “use your damn brains Emerson!”
It’s not the worst we have seen of him, but the disappointment is palpable.
And now, for the main event – the supporters who have lost all hope. We can’t possibly cover every tweet that talks about the abject anger that the fans are feeling right now, but here are a few of them that cover the highlights.
Many were in genuine disbelief about how the player is still getting any sort of playtime at their club. They were wondering why Spence, the alternative to Emerson, can’t just play instead.
What’s funnier is that Emerson’s pass was majorly overlooked because of the 90th-minute winner fiasco that happened in the same game, in which also Emerson was involved.
Questions in the press conference were about the VAR decision, and fans were too awestruck by the decision to remember about the pass.
If it wasn’t for that, who knows how much more we would have heard about this farcical pass.