Acting Tottenham boss Cristian Stellini has been speaking about Fabio Paratici's ban from football and how he used his own time out of the game to improve himself and has also spoken about under-fire defender Davinson Sanchez.
Paratici resigned from his role as Spurs' managing director of football after he lost his appeal on Thursday against his two-and-a-half year Italian football federation ban, which had been extended globally by FIFA, for his part in the Juventus controversy over false accounting.
Stellini knows all about sitting out of the sport after his own ban from football more than 10 years ago. The Calcioscommesse match-fixing scandal swept through Italian football as large numbers of players, coaches and officials were questioned across a wave of investigations in 2011 and 2012 with a number banned for up to five years. Among those caught up in the cases to varying degrees in 2012 were Antonio Conte, who ended up with a 10-month ban knocked down to four, and Stellini who was handed an 18-month ban.
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Stellini stepped down from his coaching role at Juventus as he was not allowed to work in professional football during that period. To fill the gap in his life and to give something back, he coached a team made up of refugees and asylum seekers in Turin - named the 'Survivors' - to success in a tournament.
When asked how he had coped with his time out of the game as Paratici looks set to face a lengthy absence, Stellini said he used it to improve himself.
"I work a lot on myself because if it happen something, you have to react and be better in the future. I wait for my moment in that time and I analyse why I was in that moment and the way to be better in the future, to not have the same problem," he said. "This is important work because you look yourself in the mirror and you have to go strong if you think you are not perfect.
"I thought in that moment it was too much for me and I made a step back to analyse if football was what I want to do 100 per cent and I decide it was. I fight and I work again. I think I am trying to do my best every day."
This is not a redemption story through for the man now in charge of a Premier League club, who admits that finishing in the top four as acting head coach would be the best thing he had achieved in his career.
"It is not about redeeming myself. It is to be better," said Stellini. "All the people deserve to have a second chance in their life. This is important for everyone, not just for me or the other. This is important for everyone, but you have to work hard and be the best possible you can."
Stellini hopes that Paratici will return to the sport in the future and pointed out that there are still various lines of appeal to be had for his ban, particularly the FIFA side of it.
"He’s a man who works with passion. I hope for him because humanly, I am very close to him on a human level and I hope for him he will be back but it’s not my decision, it’s the decision of Fabio," he said. "Also, the judgment is not finished. He could come back. Also, I think the judgement is not finished. There is another part of the case and he has to wait and do his best to come back soon."
The mood is not good around Tottenham at the moment with the fans frustrated by the decisions from the top and the performances on the pitch. Stellini, who said he was told by the powers-that-be at Spurs that he has until the end of the season at the helm, admits the current anger in the stands makes it more difficult to play in front of but that his players need to rise to the challenge.
"Of course it’s not easy to play with this type of pressure because you just play with pressure normally because you have an opponent and a result to reach," said the Italian. "In that moment, it’s easier if you have all the stadium with you but if it happens, you have to react. It means you have to do something better and this is why we have to do something better."
One player who has been caught up in the toxicity around the club is Davinson Sanchez. The 26-year-old Colombian, who has not started a Premier League game in six months, was thrown into the fray on Saturday after an injury to Clement Lenglet, and after being at fault for Bournemouth's second goal found his every touch booed by his own fans before Stellini eventually took him off.
The acting head coach told football.london that he had had a good conversation with Sanchez this week about the incident and he then added that the centre-back would be part of the squad for the trip to Newcastle.
"Yes – he trained well this week and he will be involved in the match. Whether it will be from the start I don't know, but I spoke with him clearly and that goes for all the players who train well," said Stellini.
"This is not a player we don't know – he has played many, many games for Tottenham and we believe in him, we trust him. We have to continue with the players we have available, and in this moment we don't have a big squad because some players are injured, so we can only use the players we have – if they train well."
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