Tears began rolling down Cristian Stellini's cheeks as he was taken back to a time in his life that now renders him completely unable to use the word 'crisis' when it comes to Tottenham Hotspur.
The 48-year-old Italian was placed in charge this week at Spurs following the departure of Antonio Conte and while others point to the chaos behind the scenes at the north London club, with no permanent men or women's team manager and managing director of football Fabio Paratici taking a leave of absence after his worldwide ban from football-related activities, Stellini has the context to believe otherwise.
His journey to the Tottenham hotseat has been a long and winding one, but the most chastening yet ultimately rewarding experience came back in 2012.
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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 Conte, who ended up with a 10-month ban knocked down to four, and Stellini who was handed an 18-month ban.
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 with his unused skills, he coached a team made up of refugees and asylum seekers in Turin and he helped the squad - named the 'Survivors' - write their own story of triumphing against the odds.
Under his lead, the Survivors just kept on winning, all the way to the Balon Mundial title, a tournament organised by the UISP (Sports for All Union of Italy) in various Italian cities. The standard of the competition was high with some players from opposing teams going on to play in Serie A, but the Survivors beat them all.
From the moment he stepped through the door, Stellini, who was born in Cuggiono on the edge of Milan, was a passionate and professional coach for the squad of amateurs from very different backgrounds, eager to help them find an escape from their suffering and the loneliness for those away from their families.
This was a place where they felt part of something again, a group with a common goal. For his part, the Italian did not miss a single training session, let alone a game, as he tried to help them all improve on and off the pitch.
When he began to reflect on that period, Stellini immediately began to choke up. The tears quickly filled his eyes and ran down his cheeks.
"It’s very emotional, talking about that experience. It allowed me to grow as a man, not as a professional, because they were not professional, they were refugees. They tried to have something new in their life. It’s really emotional for me. I grew as a man," he remembered.
It was an experience that quickly showed Stellini that his troubles then were nothing compared to those of the people he was coaching.
"No, exactly. That was the importance of my job there, and what I learned was that, back home, they had more problems than me," he said. "Obviously, I was sad for my situation but they smiled, they worked hard, they came.
"We had 35 people coming on to the pitch without shoes, with socks and they said, ‘I can train?’ We said, ‘Yes, you can, obviously, but you need shoes’. They said, ‘Shoes? I play without shoes’. We said, ‘How can you play without shoes against players with studs? It’s dangerous for you’. ‘No, it’s not dangerous, don’t worry’. And I trained 35 people like this.
"I remember there was one from Afghanistan, many from Morocco, a lot from Ghana, DR Congo, much more from Africa.
"The guy from Afghanistan had a great history. He tried to come on a dinghy but they brought him back to Turkey not once but three times. The next step for him was hiding in a big spare tyre. He hid there until Greece, for maybe 24 hours, and when he arrived from Greece, they brought him out all curled up and it was impossible for him to extend his legs. From that he escaped and came to Italy.
"He was a boxer and also not a perfect man. He was guilty of something and he had to hide in Italy and he needed a lawyer, but he came to train every day with a smile and he called himself ‘Robben’. He said, ‘You have to call me Robben, you have to call me Robben’. But they taught me a lot of things about enjoying your life."
Oumarou Pountugnigni, a former Survivors player, once told La Stampa of Stellini: "He was a defender like me, he taught me the tricks but above all he taught me that nothing is impossible. The three in defence can block ten men if they want to."
In a world today in which football's top level has lost context for some with the huge sums of money awash in the game and the exaggerated problems the sport brings, Stellini was asked whether he has told the story of his Survivors team to his Spurs players.
"I speak about this but not the history of the players because you don’t have time. There are many matches and if I am speaking with a player in a normal moment I can speak about this." he said. "But I would prefer for this type of man [the boxer] to speak with them, because if you heard it from me, you can think, ‘Oh, Cristian, you are exaggerating’.
"No, no, no. This is real life, I don’t try to tell a fake story, this is real life. I lived this. We played many matches and I won with them a tournament called Mundialito in Turin. You got to a tournament with national teams from Nigeria, Morocco, Brazil… You needed seven players from a Brazil to play a game and call yourselves Brazil. Or Peru… We were the only team with so many refugees.
"We won, but we won with a goalkeeper with one eye. I saw this guy for the first time on the bench and said, ‘Who’s this?’. We changed many players because sometimes they arrived and sometimes they didn’t. I’d say, ‘Where is someone?’ And they’d say, ‘We don’t know’. 'Okay, who plays there?'.
On that goalkeeper, he added: "We were in this tournament and all the players said to me, ‘If we go to penalties, he has to be the keeper’. I said, ‘But he is without an eye?'. They said, ‘But he is the top keeper, he saves every penalty’.
"In the semi-final and final he saved three penalties and we won the tournament. I said, ‘How is this possible?’ And they said, ‘It’s about desire’. He was from Morocco. It was an incredible experience."
Stellini remembered when he was first asked if he wanted to come on board with the squad in Turin.
"There was an old coach, a pensioner, and he stayed there every Tuesday and Friday with this guy, he was a friend, and I met the friend of mine, and he said ‘If you want to help me, Cristian, it will be a good experience’, and I said, ‘Why not?’ I tried to push them by saying, ‘You know, professional players do this, and you have to improve by doing this…’ And do you know they listened to me," he recalled.
"They came from many countries, from English Africa and French Africa, they were Francophone and Anglophone, and every day, every training, the two sides would fight and it was a problem. We had to split them up, they were big and nasty people. So it was a big problem but I used football to create a unit. It was a big experience. I could write a book."
Stellini remains in touch with some of Survivors through social media, he proudly states that one of them now has a degree in chemical engineering.
That is why when the Italian is asked whether Tottenham are in crisis right now, he struggles with the concept of using such a word to describe a football team in fourth place in the Premier League.
"You cannot feel it's a crisis when you have a club around you, when you have fans around you," said Stellini. "Crisis is a different thing. Crisis means you cannot play football, when we had Covid, that was a crisis for everyone. It’s a crisis when you don’t have fans in your stadium.
"But now we play, we have everything, we have 10 games to play and the club can take a decision in the future. We feel at home here. Crisis? It is speculation to try to punch Tottenham, this is what it is."
Now Stellini must get Tottenham back on track following Conte's exit. He does not have the grand playing career of his former boss - he did play twice for Juventus before a serious leg injury ended that dream - and he is known more as a solid defender who worked hard to help Como and Genoa earn promotion to Serie A.
Stellini brings that work ethic into how he coaches players who compete at the very top level but might not have the same desire.
"Who you were in your playing career is definitely important in how you work and your approach to the game. You expect that the players will approach the game like you did," he said. "But you cannot expect that they are all like you. You have to accept that, and allow the players to be themselves, not how you want.
"You have to use passion in the way you train, to talk to the players, to let them understand what you need, but they have to be themselves."
He added that he only wants happy players at Tottenham for this big run-in to finish the Premier League campaign, a time in which they play nine teams out of the 10 with something to play for.
"This is one of the first things I said to the players: ‘I don’t want sad faces here.’ I want only players with smiles, because we are playing football. We are playing for Tottenham!" he said. "We are in a good position. We have to stay there. The desire has to be to reach the target, because the target can give energy and a future to everyone.
"It’s really important [to play against teams with something to play for]. We know that we are up and down for a long time. We had a small part last season where we were not up and down, and it was at the end of the season.
"What changed between now and that moment? Nothing, because we work in the same way. We have to try to be the same team we were in that moment. In that moment you could feel the energy we had. We have to recreate that. Smiling faces are important for that, players with good behaviour, players that help each other."
Stellini held what he will hope could eventually be looked back on as a key meeting on Friday with his players, with everyone having returned from international duty. The Italian and his senior players spoke about the situation at the club and he clarified what had happened with Conte and what will happen under him.
"I was impressed because I felt that players were taking responsibility for the situation, for the club," he said of the meeting. "We have to know where we are. Football is about time and movement and spaces. It’s the same in life. You have to know where you are and where you want to go and the speed you need to go where you want.
"You need players that play like they live their lives. I felt that the players wanted to go to an important point. If we are together, we can do it."
Harry Kane, who has been the team captain during Hugo Lloris' injury-enforced absence, spoke to the group as well and Stellini explained what the England captain said.
"He said that it is a particular moment, that they want to be responsible, they want to respect the staff, because they know us," said the acting head coach. "They needed to have clarification of the situation and they were happy about how we did that.
"We didn’t speak enough, so they wanted this, they got this, and after that I can feel the smiles again and respect."
Son Heung-min spoke while on international duty about his own sense of culpability over the exit of Conte and that impressed Stellini.
"When players take responsibility in this type of situation, it means they are mature," he said. "They think about their performance, what they are doing, how important they are in the dressing room and on the pitch. Sonny is an important player.
"If you have this answer from Sonny in a moment like this, you have players who are focused on the moment they are in and want to come out of this moment. It would be worse if the players didn’t care about what happened. That was an important moment for us when a manager like Antonio is gone. It’s not only about Antonio, it’s about the players. It’s an important thing and I appreciated it."
Stellini was proud of his Tottenham players on Friday as they spoke in the meeting about what they need to do for the team and it was something he has always wanted from them.
"It was a request that came from a long time [ago]. From the experience you have, you have to grow," he said. "You have to improve yourself as a man. We’re not just speaking about players, we speaking about human beings. This type of experience, if you react in the right way, makes you better as a human being."
It was clear that Stellini was not only speaking about those Tottenham players but also himself and the life that has brought him to this point. There have been missteps, mistakes, redemption and success along his career and while he would never compare his tale to those of life and death among his Survivors back in 2012, he fought his own personal battle and came out the other side.
Stellini has stared into the eyes of those with nothing who despite that wanted to work together for something. For anyone else, there can only be excuses and certainly no talk of a crisis.
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