De Zerbi is one of football's maverick managers. In an age where set pieces and fine margins are becoming the main way to win, he would still rather emerge as a victor by way of playing with a swagger.
That should, in theory, marry up to what Tottenham and their fans want. One of the main knocks on Thomas Frank, sacked in February well over a couple of months after he had turned supporters against himself, was the style of play he had implemented. Spurs became a chore to watch and weren't even getting much of an upgrade on results compared to the Dane's predecessor, Ange Postecoglou, who famously lived and died by his attacking principles.
"I want to enjoy. I'm living a dream and to live a dream you have to enjoy," De Zerbi told The Athletic of his footballing philosophy in 2023 while manager of Brighton. "First of all is to enjoy. Second is to keep the mentality when I was a player. I wanted to be a protagonist on the pitch. To be a protagonist you have to keep the ball, to have the ball.
"From it starts the ball possession. I was the No.10. You win the game through the No.10, No.11, No.9 and No.7, because they are the players with more quality. And to show their quality they have to be put in the right situations to play. And so starts the build-up, because we have to reach the No.7, No.9, No.10, No.11 with the ball in a good situation."
Most players who have worked under De Zerbi can vouch that he changed the way they perceived football. His recent track record also reads like the sort of coach Spurs would ordinarily be after, leading Brighton to their highest-ever Premier League finish of sixth in 2022-23, taking them to the Europa League last 16 a season later and then making waves in France with Marseille.
There remains a strong fascination around De Zerbi for how he likes to set his teams up. It's for these reasons that he remains so high on Manchester United's shortlist for the upcoming summer, should they decide not to hand Michael Carrick the head coach's job on a long-term basis.
Ultimately, no 'big club' has bit the bullet on hiring him to date. Where De Zerbi can make teams much better than the sum of their parts, they can equally collapse and crater without even being under pressure.
The Italian's volatility on a personal level, frequently and publicly threatening to walk away from whatever job he's in if he feels he's not the right person for the role, extends to how his teams play. They are almost as likely to blow teams away as they are to get walked all over themselves. It's a trade-off that has kept Europe's elite at arm's length, with many clubs admiring De Zerbi but not wanting to be the ones who gave him the keys to their next glamorous project.
Were Tottenham still a team who consistently finished in the Premier League's top six, then a roll of the dice with De Zerbi would at least make some sort of sense. Spurs made checks on the Italian at the end of the 2022-23 season, in which they finished in eighth, two spots below his Brighton side, but a deal to make him manager at that time was never close. There is still long-standing interest to fall back on.
But this Tottenham are in dire straits. The club has never experienced a crisis like the one it's in right now. Though Spurs are yet to drop below the dotted line and into the bottom three, relegation seems more inevitable with each passing week given the recklessness of their performances, results and off-field antics.
That Spurs have gone 13 matches without a Premier League victory is an almost sure-fire sign they are on their way down. Only three teams have made a worse start to a calendar year in the competition's history, and all three were relegated come the end of the season.
De Zerbi, more fiery than even the most inflammatory managers in recent Spurs memory, would also be inheriting a team supremely unsuited to his idyllic, evangelical play-style. There would be little time for him to have a bedding-in period - he failed to win any of his first five Premier League matches at Brighton - and the squad is drastically unsuited to his needs. Tottenham have assembled a team of duellers, runners and second-ball winners but have a noticeable vacancy of players who can pass or progress the ball under pressure.
There is a human element behind resistance to this hiring, too. On Friday, several Tottenham fan groups released statements speaking out against the club's pursuit of De Zerbi on the basis of his relationship with Mason Greenwood.
De Zerbi signed Greenwood during his first transfer window at Marseille in the summer of 2024. The forward was put up for sale by Manchester United having not represented them in two-and-a-half years following an initial arrest in January 2022 after sensitive material was published online. Greenwood was charged with attempted rape, assault and coercive control, but these charges were later dropped following what the Crown Prosecution Service described as a "combination of the withdrawal of key witnesses and new material". Greenwood was therefore not sent to trial, but what was published leading to his arrest was widely viewed and remembered.
Marseille's decision to sign Greenwood stirred controversy in France, but De Zerbi threw himself in front of that storm. "I don't know his background," De Zerbi blindly said of the player, adding he would treat him and the rest of the squad as if they were his "sons". De Zerbi sought to downplay knocks on Greenwood's character at any given opportunity, commenting after his debut goal that he hoped that would become "less of a target for controversy". He later said Greenwood was a "good person" and one "very different from the one portrayed in England".
The messages from Spurs' various supporters associations spoke of a desire to avoid a character like De Zerbi. 'Proud Lilywhites', Tottenham's official LGBTQ+ group, said: "When someone in that position publicly defends a player like Mason Greenwood, and frames it in a way that downplays the seriousness of what happened, it matters, not just in isolation but in what it signals.
"We are proud of the progress that's been made in making football more inclusive and welcoming. That progress matters, and it cannot be compromised or treated as secondary. We are not asking for perfection. We are asking for accountability, transparency, and leadership that reflects the values this club claims to stand for. All together, always. That has to mean something. No to De Zerbi."
'Women of the Lane', the fans' association for women, and 'Spurs REACH', their race, ethnicity and cultural heritage supporters' association, echoed similar sentiments with that one clear message - 'no to De Zerbi'. It shouldn't be seen as weak or contrarian to not want your football club to have a manager who has acted in this way.
Goodwill has never been in a shorter supply at Spurs than at this moment. Daniel Levy's departure as chairman in September 2025 was meant to herald a new era, with the club briefing they were targeting 'more wins, more often'.
That was the bulletin broadcast by the club's owners, the elusive Lewis family, who had in fact been in control of Tottenham the entire time Levy was in post. His powers were transferred to several people, rather than having one almighty overseer again. At the top of the food chain was new CEO Vinai Venkatesham, who was already unpopular among fans for his 14-year association at rivals Arsenal.
Commonly seen with Venkatesham has been sporting director Johan Lange. In five transfer windows since joining from Aston Villa in November 2023, the squad has been significantly weakened, with Spurs finishing 17th in the Premier League following Lange's first full season in the job. After the most recent January window, Lange angered supporters by insisting he did not want to make "stress" purchases, even with the threat of relegation looming and injury problems severely limiting the options of Frank and Tudor.
That, of course, brings us to their handling of head coaches. Frank was said to have ranked top on a list of 30 candidates last summer when scouring a Postecoglou replacement, yet ended up sacked in February. Tudor was hired in-part on the recommendation of former sporting director Fabio Paratici, but lasted only five league games before he got the chop.
Now, they are pivoting to the outspoken De Zerbi with a five-year contract offer, supposedly offering guarantees over rebuilding the squad - how many times Spurs fans have heard that line before, eh? - and seemingly without any idea that the man himself could simply walk away and down tools at the first sign of trouble, but leave with his reputation in tact. What could go wrong?
There is no easy way out for Tottenham, no golden ticket to survival. The pursuit of De Zerbi is being stomached in some corners because there is no obvious candidate. Even if another rescue specialist like Sean Dyche were to accept a short-term deal - and all signs say he wouldn't, anyway - then that wouldn't guarantee beating the drop either.
And so back round we come to the beginning and the end, with Tottenham on their hands and knees to appoint a manager who didn't seem like he gave a thought to the job until more money and more years were lumped onto a contract offer which still wasn't enough for a quick 'yes'.
De Zerbi could save Spurs from relegation. It would be both an achievement in the circumstances, but equally nothing to shout about. If he is the man they get, there isn't even a guarantee of fireworks, but you can bank on everything going up in flames.
