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Thomas Frank has implored “real Tottenham supporters” to show their backing for Mathys Tel in Saturday’s Premier League opener at home to Burnley after he was racially abused this week.
Spurs forward Tel suffered racist abuse on social media following his missed spot-kick in Wednesday’s penalty shootout loss to Paris St Germain in the Super Cup.
Tottenham said they were “disgusted” at the abuse and Tel’s team-mates Dominic Solanke and Richarlison sent messages of support online, while anti-discrimination charity Kick It Out warned players may think twice about taking penalties in the future.
Ahead of Frank’s first league fixture in charge of Tottenham, he said: “It’s of course terrible what happened to Matty and we’re doing everything we can to support him in this situation.
“He’s a strong person and with hopefully the support from his family, friends and us he will get through it, but also there’s no real Tottenham supporter that will ever do that.
“The real Tottenham supporters that we’ll see tomorrow at the stadium, they’ll back him, I expect them to.
“Listen, in tough times we step up together and I expect the fans to give him a really, really, really big cheer tomorrow.”
Tel will be part of the matchday squad alongside Yves Bissouma, who was dropped for the Super Cup clash for being late on multiple occasions for training this summer.
Frank was keen to move on from the incident after he confirmed the Mali midfielder, who has entered the final year of his contract, is available again.
He said: “There was a situation. I addressed this. There was a consequence. Bissouma will be in the squad tomorrow. Move forward and we have a big game.”
Bissouma’s future could still be away from Spurs and the club remain active in the transfer window, with a big focus on a new creative midfielder.
Crystal Palace’s Eberechi Eze and Manchester City attacker Savinho are top targets, but Frank refused to be drawn on specific names.
He added: “First and foremost, in many ways, I’m very happy with the squad. I think there’s a lot of good players.
“I think we saw a team that was very, very, very competitive (against PSG) and on any other day we would have beaten the best team in Europe.
“Of course, we want as strong and competitive a squad as possible. I know that Daniel (Levy), Johan (Lange) and Vinai (Venkatesham) are working night and day, and they have, by the way, been working night and day the last, whatever, six, seven, eight weeks.
“They definitely would like to do deals early. Sometimes, I think we need to understand it’s not that easy, but they’re working.”
Saturday will mark Frank’s home debut and he acknowledged a sense of “butterflies” before kick-off.
“I will have tomorrow,” he said.
“I know when I wake up tomorrow and I know when I step into the stadium that I will feel a little (butterflies) no doubt.
“That’ll be the first time, so that’ll be special.”
