LONDON, Oct 17 — The calf injury to Tottenham Hotspur’s Richarlison is not as serious as first thought and the Brazil forward should be fit in time for the World Cup, manager Antonio Conte said today.

The 25-year-old suffered the injury in the 2-0 Premier League win against his former side Everton at the weekend and later said that he feared he could be ruled out for Qatar.

Conte allayed those fears and confirmed that Richarlison, who has 17 goals in 38 appearances for Brazil, would recover before the tournament kicks off on November 20.

"The player is not risking to not play the World Cup, absolutely. The injury is not so serious. I’m happy for the player,” Conte told reporters ahead of his side’s league game at Manchester United on Wednesday.

"He is having a scan, an MRI and then we’ll see how long he needs to recover. For sure though, against Manchester United he is not available... I hope for him to play other games with us before the World Cup.”

Forward Dejan Kulusevski, who has not played since last month due to a hamstring problem, is close to full fitness but Conte refused to confirm whether the Swede would be available to face United.

"The medical department are working to recover him but at the same time there are situations that you have to go a bit slowly and not accelerate the process. Sometimes if you do that you worsen the situation,” said the Italian.

Tottenham head to Old Trafford third in the standings with 23 points from 10 games, seven points ahead of fifth-placed United who have a game in hand.

Conte said he would like to stick to his preferred 3-4-3 system against Erik ten Hag’s team despite the injury to Richarlison, who played alongside Harry Kane and Son Heung-min in a front three at home to Everton.

"We have another training session to decide. I prefer to play with a 3-4-3 but we’ll see. In my idea we’ve worked a lot with this system,” he added.

"Lucas Moura is recovering from his injury, (Bryan) Gil is making progress and then I have Ivan Perisic who can play like a striker.” — Reuters