Tottenham Hotspur manager Roberto De Zerbi has a lot of power behind the scenes at the club, but that was necessary for Spurs to stipulate in order to convince the former Marseille and Brighton manager to join a ship that was sinking in the first place. Both a high salary and power unprecedented to a Spurs manager were proffered to the Italian coach, and, so far, De Zerbi has made good use of it, saving the club from relegation to the EFL Championship.
So far, De Zerbi has earned the approval of the fans both for winning and for the decisions he has made, and he has not bucked what Johan Lange and Vinai Venkatesham want to do on the transfer market thus far. RDZ approved the free agent signings of Marcos Senesi and Andrew Robertson that had been in the works for months before his arrival to N17.
In addition to pushing for Tottenham to sign his old Brighton protege Jan Paul van Hecke as a third defensive addition, De Zerbi has swung around his power by vetoing his first big move in a pocket sense, as his presence helped dissuade Sebastian Kehl from jumping over to North London.
Sebastian Kehl was never the answer
Sky Sports Germany's Florian Plettenberg and Patrick Berger report that despite there being "concrete" talks between Tottenham Hotspur and the recently fired Borussia Dortmund sporting director, Kehl ended up walking away despite being the leading candidate from Vinai Venkatesham and the club to take over from Johan Lange as the next sporting director.
But Sebastian Kehl was scared off from working side by side with Lange because he did not want to be with a team that gave the manager De Zerbi so much power. So De Zerbi having such a big presence helped Spurs fans, as many of them did not want Kehl at all. Kehl is probably used to the sporting director having all the say, given there is a clear delineation of roles in the Bundesliga between manager and sporting director, which used to be the case at Tottenham under Daniel Levy.
Levy is gone, De Zerbi is here, and it is a new era for Tottenham. While that new era needs to include a real sporting director with experience and pull who can replace the underwhelming Lange, to put it kindly, Kehl would not have been a better choice than Lange. Kehl was running Dortmund into the ground with historically bad signings, losing the club's identity despite having been one of their players. Spurs would be better off grooming Ben Davies than hiring Kehl.
Add us as a preferred source on Google