Conte selected almost a full-strength side from the players available to him to start the EFL Cup third-round tie at Nottingham Forest on Wednesday despite concerns over Harry Kane, who is said to have looked tired in training the day before.
Spurs lost the tie 2-0 to the Tricky Trees, with Renan Lodi and Jesse Lingard netting the goals, to crash out of the competition.
Giles noted that he was not surprised to hear Kane was fatigued, given the England international has appeared in every Spurs game under Conte in the ongoing campaign.
With the World Cup closing in, Giles stated that Tottenham could have avoided that situation by not prioritising the EFL Cup as an important competition.
“He [Kane] would be [tired in training]”, Giles said on Off The Ball.
“And if you’ve got a World Cup coming up, like the league, that particular competition, it’s not one of the major competitions.
“You can pretend it is and say you can get into this competition if you win that.”
Giles reflected on the 1967/68 Football League Cup, which was a big deal given it was the first trophy that Leeds United had won in their history, while noting that Don Revie began rotating when they began challenging for the league and the FA Cup in later years.
“I want to go back to my time with the first trophy Leeds won, but we’d never won anything else before. So, it was a big deal”, Giles added.
“Later on, when we were winning the major competitions, we never won the league cup again after we got to the final.
“Because Don Revie, like most of the managers now, rested players to go for the league and whatever competitions that we were involved in at that particular time.”
Kane has 21 appearances to his name in all competitions for Spurs, scoring 12 goals as well as laying on three assists and will once again wear the armband for England during the World Cup in Qatar.
