Tottenham identify Monchi as contender to replace Fabio Paratici

Forum 1 year ago

Tottenham identify Monchi as contender to replace Fabio Paratici

Tottenham Hotspur have identified Sevilla sporting director Monchi as a potential successor to Fabio Paratici, 90min understands.

Paratici resigned from his post as Spurs' managing director of football on Friday morning after a 30-month worldwide ban from football was upheld by a court of appeal in Italy.

Earlier this month, Tottenham confirmed that Scott Munn will join the club as their new chief football officer at the end of the season, though this role differs from that which Paratici occupied.

Sources have told 90min that despite public insistence that FIFA's decision to make Paratici's ban from football global caught them off guard, Spurs have been eyeing a successor to the Italian since he was first charged at the back end of 2022.

One name that is emerging as a serious contender is Monchi, who is likely to leave Sevilla at the end of this season following a disappointing and testing domestic campaign.

The 54-year-old was famed for his initial 17-year stint with Sevilla starting in 2000, helping oversee a period which saw them gain promotion back to La Liga and establish themselves as one of the continent's most successful teams.

He joined Roma in 2017 but only spent two years in the Italian capital before making a swift return to the Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan.

Speaking at the World Football Summit in Seville last year, Monchi admitted he became a sporting director by chance.

"I always say that I am a sporting director by coincidence. I studied law while I was a goalkeeper but at a difficult point, Sevilla offered me the chance to be the sporting director, in 2000, when I had no idea what it really was," he said.

"I thought about creating a scouting network in order to get things wrong as little as possible and being close to the people that win games, the professionals. I consider a sporting director a tool of the manager, I am a very much a sporting director of the dressing room."

A very real possibility for Tottenham is pairing Monchi with compatriot Luis Enrique, who is among Spurs' leading candidates to succeed Antonio Conte as head coach.