We don’t have much of an update about Tottenham Hotspur co-Sporting Director Fabio Paratici and his potential departure to Fiorentina. News broke a couple of days earlier that La Viola, currently dead last in the Serie A table and looking set for relegation if they don’t complete a major turnaround, had approached Paratici (but crucially not Tottenham) to gauge his interest in becoming Fiorentina’s new Director of Football position.
So the update is not that Don Fabio has agreed to leave the club,
but that Fiorentina are serious about it. A lot can yet happen, but this does appear to be A Thing.™
I am not a betting man, but if I were I’d probably say that this is very likely to happen. While it’s weird that Paratici would leave Spurs, a club that backed him during his ban from football-related activities and gave him work as a consultant, after only two months into his current position. That said, Fabio is Daniel Levy’s man — the offer to work alongside Johan Lange as a co-Sporting Director came from the former Chairman, and Levy was outed by the Lewis Kids this fall.
So that makes it potentially a complicated situation. Irrespective of whether Fabio wants to leave to return to Italy or not, you can also see where Paratici leaving would create a vacancy that could be filled by the new regime. Maybe that means this becomes fully Lange’s show, or maybe Spurs CEO Vinai Venkatesham would shuffle the deck chairs again, appoint an actual Director of Football, and again adjust Lange’s responsibilities. Maybe new appointment Rafi Moersen would have some sort of role also. We don’t know, but it could potentially be significant, especially with the January transfer window looming.
But that’s putting the cart in front of the horse. First things first, we need to know what Fabio wants to do. Romano makes it sound like he’s willing to leave to build Fiorentina back up, potentially from scratch, and as I said earlier that might have its appeal. Whatever happens, I hope it resolves quickly one way or the other, because major backroom disruptions right before a critical transfer window is troubling.
