Tuchel on Conte after fiery tussle in Chelsea-Tottenham draw: ‘When you shake hands you look into each other’s eyes’

Thomas Tuchel and Antonio Conte were involved in a fiery handshake touchline tussle and were sent off at the end of a thrilling 2-2 draw between Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League, at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. In what turned out to be a high-adrenaline clash, both managers had to be separated twice after both of Spurs’ equalisers. Both of them first clashed after Pierre-Emile Johberg cancelled out Kalidou Koulibaly’s opener and then also after Harry Kane drew Spurs level in the sixth minute of added time. After full-time, Tuchel seemed to be annoyed that Conte didn’t look him in the eye during their handshake, which led to another tussle and the referee had to end up showing them red cards.

Reacting to the incident, Tuchel said during the post-match press conference, “Yes and I think he enjoyed it as well. It was nothing bad. I don’t have any bad feeling and I’m sure he will not have any. We fought for our teams and it happens. It’s so close here and it was such an intense match … both dugouts are very close, so it got a bit heated from both of us.”

“I just compared it to two players who had a bit of a fight on the field and nothing happened. Nobody gets injured and the players, if you have a hard tackle or fair tackle, if you don’t go and apologise, there’s no need.”

“Both of us were fighting for our teams. That was it, nobody got insulted, nobody got hurt, we didn’t have a fist fight or something”.

Speaking to Sky Sports, Tuchel said, “I thought when we shake hands you looked into each other’s eyes, he had a different opinion.”

After the draw, Chelsea are currently seventh in the Premier League standings with four points with Tottenham in fourth position. Chelsea face Leeds United in their next match on Sunday and Tottenham host Wolverhampton Wanderers on Saturday.