Our long international nightmare is officially over. Former Tottenham Hotspur director of football and current Spurs “consultant” Fabio Paratici has officially concluded his 30 month football ban and is now cleared to work in the game again. He is expected to take another job in football shortly.
If you’re a newer Spurs fan you might not be as familiar with Don Fabio and his history with Spurs. A former top executive at Juventus, Paratici left Italy under a cloud of suspicion after involvement with two Juventus financial scandals. He took the jot of Director of Football at Tottenham Hotspur for a couple of seasons, notably signing Rodrigo Bentancur and Dejan Kulusevski from his old culb. Eventually his financial shenanigans caught up to him; FIFA issued him a 30 month ban from all football related activities for his time at Juventus, which resulted in him resigning from his official position with Spurs.
For the past couple of years and during his ban, Paratici has been acting as an “unofficial advisor” to Tottenham, a unique position that has allowed him to skirt the ban somewhat — he’s been connected to the club in many ways, but not in a way that would get him or Spurs in trouble with FIFA. In the meantime, Spurs restructured their backroom staff with Johan Lange assuming a leadership role in player recruitment and acquisition.
There’s been a ton of discussion about Paratici rejoining Tottenham Hotspur in some official capacity once his ban is over, but as of yet nothing official has been announced. But I’d be shocked if he didn’t rejoin Spurs in some way, working with Lange and the rest of the recruitment team. Based on his previous time at Spurs, his methodology is vastly different than that of Lange — while Lange keeps leaks to a minimum and is highly secretive with his targets, Paratici was by contrast almost flamboyant. He was known for publicly working on several targets for the same position before identifying one to finalize, which we dubbed the “Paratici scattergun.” If he does join Tottenham’s backroom staff again, it will be interesting how that dynamic works... and even if it does.
I’m sure we’ll get clarity about Paratici and what he wants to do in due course. In the meantime, let’s celebrate Don Fabio’s return and remind him not to do Crimes while he’s here.