Leicester City need glory in the Europa Conference League to help keep their squad together for next season, full-back Timothy Castagne believes. Castagne is playing in his sixth consecutive European campaign following deep runs with Genk and Atalanta, and believes it’s important for the club to be able to offer continental football to players.
Timothy Castagne said: “That’s a big thing for us. First of all because I think having a season with just the Prem and of course the cups, it’s going to be a bit empty after going through Europe and stuff. For the club, the money will be different for them, but that’s not something I should think about. We want to do something again in the Europa League so it would be nice to win the Conference League and go there. That’s also a big thing (attracting players) and also to keep players from going, you can say we have Europa League. You don’t need as many players if you don’t have Europa League so you can’t keep the players you want to keep, so it helps in a lot of aspects if you have Europa League.”
One of those who could depart City if they cannot offer European football is Castagne’s countryman Youri Tielemans. With the midfielder yet to sign a new contract despite discussions beginning more than 12 months ago, talk around his future has been rife. Castagne says Tielemans is so professional that it has not made a single bit of difference to his performances, and won’t be distracting him during the climax to the campaign.
Timothy Castagne said: “We always joke with him because he never puts a foot wrong. He’s always the first one in the gym working. He’s always very professional. It doesn’t affect him at all, he’s just thinking about the next game and then at the end of the season we will see what happens. But even with me he doesn’t talk about this stuff he just wants to talk about the next game. I like playing with him. With Youri you know if he has the ball and a bit of time you know you can go deep and he’s going to find the pass. So that’s very easy to play with him.”
