The unused substitute on Saturday decided to leave the bench and head straight to the dressing room after his boss had made all five changes.
Jose Mourinho admits Dele Alli is “not a happy player” after the midfielder departed early from Tottenham’s Europa League outing against Antwerp.
Tottenham topped Group J following a 2-0 victory on matchday 6, thanks to Carlos Vinicius’s close-range strike and Giovani Lo Celso’s calm outside-of-the-foot finish.
Mourinho used all of the five substitutions available to him, but none of them involved Dele Alli.
Alli disappeared down the tunnel just after the Spurs boss made his final change at minute 68 in a way that indicated frustration over the lack of playing time.
The England international, however, did return to the bench a short while later.
Speaking after the match, Mourinho suggested that the unused substitute’s reaction was completely natural.
“Let’s not run away from the reality,” Mourinho told reporters, via Sky Sports. “A player on the bench who realizes with five changes he is not one of them, of course, he is not a happy player and I wouldn’t expect him to be.
“But every player who is on the bench, or leaves the pitch in cold weather with me, they can go to the dressing room and I even prefer if that happened.”
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