Tottenham have named their squad for the Champions League campaign this season.
And there is one big absentee from the list.
The squad was revealed on Uefa.com today, after all clubs in the group stage had to enter their list of players by midnight on Tuesday, September 3.
But Juan Foyth's name is not on the list, although there's a good reason for it.
Spurs have had plenty of issues in recent seasons with too many foreign player for their European squad and it impacted on what players they could them target during the transfer windows.
Manager Mauricio Pochettino had to make the tough decision to leave certain players out of the Champions League squad last season. Young Argentine defender Juan Foyth missed out on a year of football in the world's biggest club competition as there was simply no space.
He was only finally able to come back into the squad in February after Mousa Dembele's exit from the club. With no other players leaving the side and with Tottenham having their maximum of 17 permitted foreign players for the Champions League squad, it restricted their movement in the January transfer window.
Spurs were not helped by the fact that while Eric Dier and Ben Davies are considered homegrown in the Premier League, their academy years in Portugal and Wales respectively mean they are deemed to be non-locally trained [foreign] by UEFA as they did not come through the English FA system.
However, those same UEFA rules have helped Spurs this season and 21-year-old Foyth in particular when the squads were submitted for the Champions League group stages in September.
football.london contacted UEFA in July and having joined Tottenham in August 2017 and born on January 12, 1998, Foyth can now be entered on the club's B list.
That in turn opens up a foreign player spot on the main A list for a new signing, along with the spaces left by Michel Vorm and Fernando Llorente, whose contracts have both expired at the club, although the latter has been offered a new one. Tanguy Ndombele will take one of those spots.
A player may be registered on the B List if he is born on or after January 1, 1998 and has been eligible to play for the club for any uninterrupted period of two years since his 15th birthday by the time he is registered with UEFA.
Players aged 16 may be registered on the B List if they have been registered with the club for the previous two years without interruption. There is no stipulation that a player who fits the criteria must be homegrown on the B list.
On the Champions League A list it is a different matter with locally trained players classified as either a "club-trained player" or an "association trained player".
Each club must have eight locally trained players registered with no more than four of those spots taken by association trained players.
Foyth's absence from the A List was exclusively revealed by Alasdair Gold on July 22, 2019. This story was first published then.
