Spurs win Sydney friendly amid Richarlison contract uncertainty
Tottenham's 2-1 pre-season victory over Chelsea in Sydney highlighted the club's looming decision over whether to sell striker Richarlison before his contract expires.
Tottenham defeated Chelsea 2-1 in a pre-season friendly in Sydney, the first time the London rivals have met outside the UK. More than 80,000 fans at Accor Stadium watched Sandro Tonali open the scoring before Estêvão Willian equalised. Richarlison then tapped in a 92nd-minute winner after Jamie Donley’s shot came back off a post.
The late goal reinforced manager Roberto De Zerbi's stance that the club should retain the Brazilian striker. Richarlison has less than a year left on the contract he signed after joining from Everton in 2022. This puts Tottenham at risk of losing him for nothing next summer or being forced into a cut-price sale in the current window.
De Zerbi emphasised the difficulty of replacing Richarlison's output in the current transfer market. “For me he’s still an important player because it’s not so easy to find another striker [like] Richarlison, because Richarlison scored goals and he knows the way. The new striker, we don’t know, the other striker, we don’t know. He [Richarlison] scored 12 goals last season, not for luck, because he feels the way to score.”
Despite the public backing, the player's immediate future remains unclear. “I don’t know, I didn’t understand well, because sometimes he said to stay, sometimes he leaves, we have to speak,” De Zerbi said. “Anyway, there is not any problem, he’s a lovely guy. All of us love him, the teammates, the club, the staff, because he works hard every day.”
The match itself was a physical, ill-tempered affair typical of the fixture's history. Kevin Danso was sent off three minutes after coming on at half-time for a headfirst lunge on João Pedro. “It was worse for us and for Chelsea, because if you consider the condition of the pitch, very bad,” De Zerbi said of the dismissal.
A returning asset
Beyond the result, Chelsea's tour received a significant boost with the news that Mykhailo Mudryk has been cleared to play. The winger will join the squad in Hong Kong after the Football Association and the World Anti-Doping Agency resolved his appeal against a four-year ban for a failed drug test in 2024.
De Zerbi, who managed Mudryk at Shakhtar Donetsk, welcomed the resolution. “I’m very happy – he deserves to play, he’s a good guy, top player. Hopefully he can show what he suffered in the last two years, in the next season, maybe not against Tottenham, but he’s a lovely guy and he’s a very, very good player.”
The return of Mudryk restores a valuable asset to Chelsea's squad just as Tottenham must calculate the market value of a striker who just reminded them of his worth.
