‘Lambs to the slaughter’ was among the first replies after Tottenham’s official account tweeted images of Cristian Stellini and Ryan Mason taking charge of first-team training at Hotspur Way on Wednesday.
The duo have been put in charge of the team for the remaining ten games of the season following Antonio Conte’s departure late last weekend. Their task, issued by chairman Daniel Levy, is to lead the ‘fight’ for a top-four finish.
Usually, Champions League qualification would provide the perfect antidote for Tottenham’s troubles. But even if they can drag themselves across the top-four finish line, the longstanding problems still remain.
And in truth, the task Levy himself faces is far greater.
The timeline of Tottenham’s turmoil:
- Saturday 18 March: Antonio Conte describes Spurs players as “selfish” and criticises the club’s ownership after a 2-2 draw with Southampton.
- Sunday 26 March: Conte departs Tottenham by “mutual agreement.”
- Tuesday 28 March: Paratici fronts an official club interview on Tuesday evening to reassure fans and highlight the need for “focus.”
- Wednesday 29 March, 11AM: The very next morning, Fifa’s disciplinary committee announce they will extend Paratici’s 30-month footballing ban to apply worldwide, effectively barring him from fulfilling his role as Tottenham’s managing director of football.
- Wednesday 29 March, 8PM: This forces Tottenham to release a statement clarifying that “when Fabio [Paratici] conducted the interview on club channels [on Tuesday] neither he nor the club had any indication” of Fifa’s decision.
- Friday 31 March: Tottenham announce Paratici will take “an immediate leave of absence” pending the outcome of an appeal to Fifa’s decision, which will be heard on April 19.
A week of statements at Tottenham FC.
‘Club in crisis’ is a phrase often thrown around hastily. For Tottenham, however, the sentiment is justifiably apt.
Their senior men’s side is without a permanent manager. Their senior women’s team, too. Tottenham’s managing director of football Fabio Paratici has taken an immediate leave of absence after Fifa announced his 30-month ban from all footballing matters, stemming back to his time at Juventus, would apply worldwide.
Their star player, Harry Kane, is also approaching the final 12 months of his contract.
Oh, and up to seven first-team players are injured also.
“A bit chaotic, absolutely a bit chaotic,” acting head coach Stellini told a press conference on Friday, “but we have big shoulders to consider this type of situation.”
Tottenham are, most definitely, a club in turmoil. And that’s still only part of the problem.
Spurs don’t have so much an identity crisis but near football amnesia. There’s no clear strategy, there’s no apparent plan, and there’s no clear and obvious next step.
Not since the 2018-19 season has a manager completed a full campaign with Tottenham, and only one in the entirety of ENIC’s 22-year-ownership has ever had their contract renewed.
Should those harrowing statistics not deter the future incumbent of the manager’s office, they will inherit a squad that may as well be a cardboard box of assorted jigsaw pieces.
When fully fit, they have a nauseatingly unbalanced playing roster constructed over the tenures of seven predecessors.
Whichever way they lay those pieces out, the picture will be far from perfect.
So amid the crumbling ruins of his failing Juventus-on-Thames project, the job falls on Levy to start the rebuild as he looks for his next Tottenham manager with fan-frustration at an all-time high.
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It hasn’t gone unnoticed by many that Brighton – a club heralded for its identity and clear vision – has former Tottenham director, and lifelong Spurs fan, Paul Barber on their books.
Barber was executive director at Spurs between 2005-2010, reporting directly into Levy with responsibilities over the club’s commercial programmes.
Now he oversees one of the sleekest operations in the Premier League, a far cry from the current goings-on in N17.
Speaking on Michael Calvin’s Football People podcast this week, Barber outlined the key components of Brighton’s strategy to challenge the wealthy elite.
“I think you have to find a way to be smarter. You have to find a way to compete in different ways,” Barber explained. “And that can come from the success of your academy. It can come from the success of your recruitment. It can come from finding top coaches who find ways to beat the bigger teams.
“I think it starts from the place of actually having a very clear vision for what we want the club to be.”
The irony is that this model isn’t a million miles away from Levy’s ideal. The whole point of the shiny Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is to diversify the club’s means of driving revenue, being self-sufficient, and protecting both the future of the club and the surrounding areas. Before then, the club had invested heavily in its training facilities.
Both assets are widely considered among the best in the world.
And this was, in fairness, the reason for Paratici’s appointment. His arrival was meant to facilitate Levy taking a back-seat from day-to-day matters to focus on what he does best: building the club’s financial infrastructure and securing it for the future.
But having overseen two failed managerial regimes of his own since arriving in 2021, Paratici’s absence could perhaps present an unexpected opportunity for Tottenham.
While Levy may not have a managerial type on paper, Paratici certainly does. But his preferred pragmatic coaches have failed to conjure the type of free-flowing football that saw Mauricio Pochettino win the hearts and minds of Spurs fans over a five-year period between 2014 and 2019.
The painful rebuild
Pochettino is of course that one aforementioned manager who received a contract extension on Levy’s watch. He was also the last manager to complete a full season at Spurs. He was also the manager sacked within six months of leading the club to their first, and only, Champions League final.
But history has a way of remembering the good times – and Pochettino achieved a lot of good things at Spurs. There’s no doubting that. He reached two finals and secured Champions League qualification in all but the first of his five seasons in charge – including a second-place finish in the 2016-17 season.
However, there were flirtations with other clubs – notably Real Madrid – as frustrations around restricted transfer budgets festered. The domestic form either side of the Champions League run in 2019 was dismal, and his relationship with Levy grew strained as the pair disagreed on the need to revamp the playing squad.
Tottenham had got so close to silverware under Pochettino. But while he felt a refresh could take them over the line, Levy had been stunned by the bright lights and decided a manager with winning pedigree would finish the job. The squad was backed. The manager was sacked. And the rest, as they say, is history, with the club spending millions chasing the ‘win now’ dream to no avail.
Pochettino’s calls for a ‘painful rebuild’ may have fallen on deaf ears at the time, but they have echoed around Tottenham louder than ever in recent weeks. Some Spurs fans even sung his name in the bowels of the stadium after they limped out of Europe against AC Milan – in the very competition in which he had delivered arguably the proudest hours in living memory for many fans.
Will Levy swallow his pride and look to bring Pochettino back? It’s hard to say. It looked incredibly unlikely within Paratici’s web of football analysts. Pochettino is not a huge fan of the director of football model unless he has a personal relationship with them. His time under Leonardo at PSG is a testament to that.
But even with Paratici’s reign surely coming to an end, a Pochettino reunion would require Levy to hold up his hands and admit perhaps his biggest mistake. That could be one damaging blow too many for him right now.
Julian Nagelsmann (Credit Image: © Fabrizio Bertani/Alto Press via ZUMA Press)
The prospect of the recently sacked Julian Nagelsmann will be tempting this summer. The German has caught Levy’s eye before. He was considered as a replacement for Pochettino before Jose Mourinho’s appointment, and again when the Portuguese was sacked prior to Paratici’s arrival and a change in stylistic approach.
Nagelmann’s style of play would please the fans, but would he offer the club the stability they desperately need? The talented 35-year-old is rightfully ambitious, and if the club could convince him to join you can’t help but feel that Spurs would represent, at best, a way back rather than a way of life.
Pochettino, on the other hand, has since experienced the riches that elite clubs can offer and been burnt in the process. Ironically, the same riches which Conte and Mourinho are more accustomed to.
Perhaps that represents Levy and Pochettino’s best hope of finding middle-ground. They’ve both been through the looking-glass, but found anything but wonderland.
Sometimes the old songs really are the best. If Pochettino has some ‘magic’ left, then perhaps Tottenham fans will have something to believe in again.