Mathys Tel Has Not Scored for Bottom-of-the-Table Tottenham This Season, but He Just Equalled France’s All-Time Under-21 Scoring Record

• Mathys Tel has not scored a single goal for Tottenham this season, with Spurs bottom of the Premier League, but he scored a hat-trick for France Under-21s in a 7-1 win over Switzerland that equalled Odsonne Edouard’s all-time scoring record for the age group.
• Tel told L’Equipe that his brother had been “nagging” him about the record for months and that it had stayed on his mind through the international break.
• France had already secured their place at the 2027 European Under-21 Championship before the Switzerland match, finishing qualifying unbeaten with eight wins, and Tel’s form could put him in contention for senior selection under Zinedine Zidane before November’s Nations League fixtures.

A Hat-Trick for a Record His Brother Would Not Let Him Forget

Mathys Tel scored three goals for France Under-21s against Switzerland in Orleans on Tuesday night, taking his tally in the age group level with Odsonne Edouard’s all-time record of 17. He had already scored in two of France’s other matches earlier in the international break, so the record had been getting closer with every call-up. According to Tel, he did not need reminding how close he was getting. His brother made sure of that anyway.

“My brother had been nagging me about it for months,” Tel told L’Equipe. “In the end, it was in the back of my mind.” It is a small, specific detail, a sibling keeping score long after the player himself might have preferred to let it go, and it gives a human shape to a number that would otherwise just sit in a record book next to Edouard’s name.

A Record Set Up by Pressure That Had Already Lifted

France Under-21s had already qualified for the 2027 European Championship before the Switzerland match, finishing their group unbeaten with eight wins from eight. That context shaped how Tel played against Switzerland. With qualification already secured, the match carried none of the tension of a must-win fixture, and Tel said that freedom changed how he approached it. The win itself, a 7-1 scoreline in Orleans, was built on that same freedom running through the team.

Tel described the effect in his own words to L’Equipe, saying the already-completed qualification gave him “a different kind of motivation that allowed me to give my best.” Players who talk about pressure usually talk about carrying more of it, not less. Tel’s hat-trick came from the opposite experience, a game stripped of consequence that let him play without calculating the cost of a mistake.

A Record That Belonged to a Different Kind of Player

Odsonne Edouard built his own Under-21 scoring record in a different shirt, with a different career arc, over several years of call-ups. Tel has caught him in less time, across three matches in a single international window, two of which mattered for qualification and one of which, against Switzerland, did not. A shared record says nothing about who was the better player across a career. It says a great deal about how Tel is being used by his country right now: as a finisher trusted with minutes in matches that count, and now in one that did not need to.

None of It Has Shown Up for Tottenham Yet

Back in England, Tel has not scored once for Tottenham this season. Spurs sit at the bottom of the Premier League, their form summed up by a 3-2 home defeat to Aston Villa, their third loss in five opening league games. The gap between Tel’s international week and his club season is stark: a record-equalling hat-trick for his country, and not a single goal yet for the team paying his wages. Form at international level does not automatically carry over to a club shirt, but it does put more attention on a player who has not delivered there yet, and it raises a question Roberto De Zerbi will have to answer about where Tel fits once the Premier League resumes.

That question arrives at an awkward time for De Zerbi. Pedro Porro withdrew from the Spain squad earlier in the international break with a hamstring issue, and Jan Paul van Hecke was sent home early from the Netherlands camp with a foot problem. Spurs captain Micky van de Ven suffered a minor hand injury after being stepped on in the Netherlands’ win over Serbia, though Netherlands manager Xavi played down its seriousness: “He is okay. He felt dizzy, he suffered with his finger. It is not a big injury.”

A Squad Picked Apart by a Three-Week Break

Three separate Tottenham players came out of the international window with physical concerns, in three different camps, for three different countries. That spread is part of what makes a long mid-season break so disruptive for a club already struggling for results: there is no single injury to manage and build a plan around, just a list of fitness checks arriving from Spain, the Netherlands and France within days of each other, each one landing on De Zerbi’s desk before he has had a full week to work with his squad together.

De Zerbi’s Defensive Puzzle Before Old Trafford

Tottenham travel to face Manchester United at Old Trafford on Saturday, and De Zerbi could have to do it without two first-choice defenders if Porro and Van Hecke are not cleared in time. A club video from the break showed De Zerbi relaxed alongside Gus Poyet, a former Tottenham player now on the first-team coaching staff, a small sign of calm at a club that has lost three of its opening five league matches. Calm in a training video and a settled back four for Old Trafford are two different things, and De Zerbi needs the second one more.

What Zidane Does With It

For Tel, the more interesting consequence of his week sits with the senior France squad rather than Tottenham’s back four. A record-equalling international hat-trick is the kind of form that forces a senior manager to pay attention, and Zinedine Zidane now has a decision to make before November’s Nations League fixtures: promote a young forward on the back of Under-21 form and no club goals, or wait for Tottenham form that has not yet arrived.

That decision carries its own risk either way. Call him up on the strength of three Under-21 matches and a senior debut could arrive before he has scored a single Premier League goal this season, an awkward subplot if it happens. Leave him out and a record-equalling week goes unrewarded at the only level that eventually decides a career. Zidane has given himself weeks rather than days to make the call, which suggests he would rather watch what Tel does for Tottenham against Manchester United before deciding anything at all.

Tel’s week leaves him with two separate stories running at once. With France, he has a shared all-time scoring record and a senior manager now watching him. With Tottenham, he has a bottom-of-the-table club, a new manager short of fit defenders, and a personal goal tally stuck at zero. Which story counts for more by November depends on whether De Zerbi can give him the minutes to close the gap himself.