It is official! Tottenham Hotspur name Fabio Paratici Managing Director

In an announcement everyone has been waiting for, Tottenham Hotspur has announced Fabio Paratici as Managing Director, Football. 

Tottenham officially announce Paratici

Effective July 1, which means we may be waiting a while on that coach, Paratici will start as the Football Managing Director for the club.

Paratici has been linked with the club for weeks since leaving Juventus following a decade in Turin. With Juve, Paratici helped build a side that has won multiple scudettos over the last several years after the club had been relegated to Serie B in the 2000s.

All told Juve won 19 trophies during Paratici’s time as Sporting Director. Fabio’s success in identifying and selling players, particularly in economical ways early in his tenure, helped to build the team that dominated Italy for the last decade-plus.

After his Juve success, it is on to a new, yet similar challenge to the one Paratici faced when starting in Turn. Tottenham is not coming off relegation but is down after several years in the Champions League.

Surely Paratici is not unaware of the limitations on spending he will face and heads into this appointment eyes wide open because he has some work to do.

Paratici has his work cut out for him at Tottenham

First and foremost, Paratici needs to be simultaneously finishing up this manager search and wooing Harry Kane. Albeit a bit strange to woo your own player under contract for a further three years, we all know things will start and end this summer with what Kane wants to do moving forward.

It is up to Paratici to convince Kane he is the one to get the players and coaches needed to move the club forward to equal Kane’s ambition.

Paratici seems to already have a big head start on task 1, in terms of the Tottenham coach. In another poorly kept secret, Paulo Fonseca looks to be appointed as the next coach of Tottenham. Whether or not Fonseca is the kind of appointment that appeases Kane remains to be seen, but presumably Paratici has some time to make this right.

Time is the tough part for Spurs fans to swallow

Time is the weird piece here. First, the announcement came on a Saturday, which is plain weird, particularly given it is the first day of a triple header in Euro 2020. Second, the fact that Paratici will not actually start his role until July 1 is equally strange.

Presumably, he was announced now to help soothe the tension and ease pressure from the fanbase, but does this mean Tottenham will sit for the next two weeks and do nothing in the market? If Tottenham fails to move players out or bring players in during the first two weeks, they will fall further behind.

Third, with the timing, is that if Paratici is not starting until July 1, does that mean we are going to continue to wait for the coach? Presumably, it is Paratici who is hiring the coach, how is he interviewing and hiring on behalf of the club if not employed by the club? Maybe this is just all about trust on everyone’s part but the timing is odd in terms of both the announcement and now another wait.

Tottenham could announce Fonseca next week with a similar starting date to Paratici, which seems likely at this point. However, the two-week waiting period to come when neither man is currently employed also seems odd.

All that said, two weeks is little to wait for Paratici, who can work the same kind of magic and have the same kind of success at Tottenham as he had in Turin. After months of uncertainty, two weeks to wait for a certain future is easy to accept.

Regardless, the good news is that step one we have long waited for has officially occurred and Fabio Paratici is going to be in charge of Football operations moving forward at N17.