Not only are Tottenham on the lookout for a new head coach, the club also require a new managing director of football following Fabio Paratici's resignation on Friday morning. Amid plenty of question marks surrounding the Italian's future at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium after receiving a 30-month ban from Italian football in January, which was later extended worldwide by FIFA at the end of March, both parties have now parted ways.
Tottenham confirmed after FIFA's decision last month that the 50-year-old would take an immediate leave of absence pending the outcome of his appeal, which was heard by the Italian Olympic Committee on Wednesday afternoon. Unfortunately for Paratici, as well as a number of his former Juventus officials, his appeal was rejected, thus leading to his Tottenham exit after almost 22 months in the job.
A statement on Tottenham's official club website read: "Yesterday - 20 April 2023 - Fabio Paratici was unsuccessful with an appeal against his Italian Football Federation (FIGC) ban on certain football related activities.
READ MORE: Fabio Paratici resigns as Tottenham managing director of football after FIFA ban
"FIFA ruled to extend the ban worldwide and, whilst there continues to be a dispute as to the scope and extent of the ban, the current worldwide ban prevents Fabio from fulfilling his duties as our managing director of football. Fabio has consequently taken the decision to resign from his position at the club with immediate effect to focus on his legal position in respect of the FIGC and FIFA rulings."
Daniel Levy added: “This has been a stressful time for Fabio and his family. We wanted to ensure that we allowed for due process to be followed. Fabio is a man who lives and breathes football - we wish him well.
“As outlined in our year end results, we started several months ago to restructure our football operations and last week announced the appointment of Scott Munn as chief football officer to head up all the departments. We shall continue to strengthen our football functions over the coming months.”
As one of his main duties was to push on the process of finding Tottenham's next head coach, Paratici's exit has really thrown a spanner in the works at such a crucial time for the club as they look to find the right man who can lead them forward. Paratici's resignation now means that chairman Levy will lead the search for Conte's long-term successor.
That will leave the chairman in a position where he has to decide between either going in his own direction or following up on the Italian's recommendations. So far a number of head coaches have been linked with the vacancy, including Mauricio Pochettino, Julian Nagelsmann, Brendan Rodgers, Luis Enrique and Ruben Amorim.
In terms of the role Paratici held at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the club are aiming to replace their former managing director of football with an external candidate. Following his arrival at the club in July 2021, Tottenham have restructured their football operations department to help them progress and move forward as a club with a number of new appointments, with Levy confirming in his latest statement that Spurs will "continue to strengthen our football functions over the coming months".
Joined last summer by Gretar Steinsson as performance director and Andy Scoulding as head of football strategy, the duo have taken on much of Paratici's workload during his time away from the club. The Lilywhites confirmed a fortnight ago that Scott Munn will be joining as chief football officer and head up all footballing departments.
The incoming chief football officer will start his new role on Saturday, July 1 and Paratici's replacement will report to him. In an ideal world Tottenham's next managing director of football would play a pivotal role in finding Conte's successor, yet Spurs are really not in a position at all where they can put their head coach search on the backburner for now.
Paratici's resignation really does give Levy an awful lot of work to do as Tottenham look to get back on track after an extremely frustrating season. All will be praying that he gets both appointments right as they will very much shape Tottenham's future going forward.
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