How much worse can this situation really get? After firing Antonio Conte a few days ago, Tottenham now have to face the loss of their director of football, Fabio Paratici, as he’s been banned by FIFA for his role in Juventus’ accounting schemes.
Tottenham’s House of Italian Cards has just fallen to pieces before their very eyes.
As if things couldn’t get any worse for the executive structure over at Tottenham, the club has now been forced to place Fabio Paratici on indefinite leave of absence as he awaits his appeal ruling over his involvement in Juventus’ false accounting accusations. Or, in plainer terms, Paratici has been booted out of Spurs for the foreseeable future over being a corrupt fraud. Allegedly, of course.
Now, I hate to rag all over Spurs as, believe it or not, I actually like the club.
Yes, I’m an avid supporter of Manchester United and will always be so, yet I’ve always appreciated the way Spurs approached the game of football. Putting the trophyless memes aside for a moment, Spurs’ place as the “little brother” of London to Arsenal and Chelsea not only made them far easier to sympathize with, but also how they played free-flowing, attractive football to a fault (well, in the past) was admirable.
Spurs back in the mid 2010’s (ex: 2014-2019) played the kind of football I was craving the David Moyes, Louis Van Gaal, and Jose Mourinho Manchester United teams would do…along with actually winning some trophies, that is. In fact, if I had to pick a second team to root for (which is not something I really do), I would choose Spurs out of all the rest of the English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, etc. teams.
Nevertheless, I hope Tottenham fans don’t hate me when I say this club is such a joke.
Time and again under Daniel Levy’s watchful eye, Spurs hire appealing, likeable candidates to major positions around the club to only see them leave in a few years in either disgust, apathy, despair, or flat out because they’ve done something wrong/sanctionable.
Bringing in Conte as the manager and Paratici as the managing director of football was supposed to bring Spurs back to the height of Champions League Finals and 2nd place finishes in the Premier League…just like how hiring Nuno Espirito Santo and Jose Mourinho was supposed to do the same thing.
Yet, just like how it finished with Mourinho and Santo, both Conte and Paratici have now found themselves outside the sphere of Tottenham as Conte ranted himself out of a job, while Paratici’s sins in Juventus have probably cost him his director position. What a great position Levy and Spurs find themselves in, right?
I know I say this in nearly every single Spurs article I write, but Spurs under Daniel Levy (and really all other administrations after the 1960s glory years) have a horrible track record of folding and cowering when the spotlight shines the brightest and longest upon them.
Obviously, this situation isn’t complete Levy’s fault as Paratici committed alleged football-related crimes while being employed by Juventus, but he’s only won a single league cup (2008) while being the CEO of Tottenham Hotspur. That’s 1 trophy in 22 years!
In my opinion, this Paratici situation really is indicative of a larger problem at Tottenham Hotspur: a corrosive tendency to not fully back managers/executives after hiring them, while also hiring unsuitable executives, managers, etc. to run the daily operations of the football club.
I realize that probably sounds like a contradiction, but it’s really not when you look at the brief history of Spurs over the last 8 or so years.
The club had an excellent manager in Mauricio Pochettino as he had Spurs on the brink of winning a trophy…but he was sacked less than 6 months after bringing Spurs to a Champions League Final because the team got off to a slow start in the league the following campaign.
Moreover, Jose Mourinho, who wasn’t a great fit for the club to begin with, had brought Spurs to an EFL Cup Final against Man City but was sacked a few days before the game as the team was also slumping in the league.
And, to top it all off, Antonio Conte was in the midst of qualifying Spurs for back-to-back entries into the Champions League for the first time in three years (2018-2020), but he was sacked with less than a dozen Premier League games left in this season as he harshly criticized the same group of players that failed Mourinho and Pochettino for being failures.
Sure, Levy backs these managers with hundreds of millions of pounds in the summer when expectations and the pressure of succeeding is low, but he has a terrible record of firing managers as soon as the defining moment of a season rolls around.
And that’s why Spurs have won a measly league cup in the 22 years of Daniel Levy’s questionable reign at the club.
As for Paratici, the guy’s toast whether FIFA upholds the Italian FA’s push for a worldwide ban on the man or not. There’s no way he’s sticking around with Conte.
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