Son Heung-min has revealed that Antonio Conte asked the Tottenham players to stick together during the half-time interval against Vitesse Arnhem.
The match started in perfect fashion for Spurs and Conte, with the home side taking a seemingly unassailable 3-0 lead within the half-hour mark.
At that point, it looked as though it could be a stroll in the park for the Lilywhites but the Eredivisie side hit-back with a quick-fire double before half-time to bring themselves right back into the game.
To compound matters for Tottenham, Cristian Romero got his marching orders just before the hour mark after picking up his second yellow.
That forced Conte to ring the changes and his side showed resolve to hold on to the slender line as Vitesse put them under pressure.
In the end, the final ten minutes of the game proved to be easier than Tottenham would have anticipated, with the away side finishing the game with just nine men after picking up two red cards late on.
Son admitted that Spurs should have sealed the result after taking a three-goal lead but praised the players for the character they showed to come away with three points.
The South Korean told UEFA.com: “The most important thing that he [Conte] said at half-time was that we should stick together because in the hardest part you need to be together otherwise it goes against us and it’s impossible to recover.
“It shouldn’t be happening [Vitesse coming back to 3-2] but that’s football. Suffering is a part of football and we showed great character not to concede.
“They were pushing and we suffered as players and a team. We should take this as a good lesson, move forwards and should do much better than today.
“It was really important that we got three points. The way was not perfect but the most important thing was to get three points.”
Spurs Web Opinion
After going 3-0 up, Conte would have hoped that the players would have been able to take the sting out of the game so that they would be relatively fresh for the trip to Goodison Park on Sunday. However, we made it much more difficult for ourselves than it should have been.
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