Paulo Fonseca has broken his silence
on his aborted appointment as Tottenham head coach, claiming managing director Fabio Paratici changed the vision chairman Daniel Levy had set out for him by ordering a more defensive approach.
Fonseca was on the verge of taking over at Spurs in June, having verbally agreed a deal with Levy, until a change of direction from Paratici saw the move collapse at the last minute.
Levy and Spurs director of football Steve Hitchen had set up the appointment of Fonseca as Jose Mourinho’s successor,
having failed to appoint Antonio Conte, only for Paratici to effectively pull the plug on the deal.
It marked an embarrassing few weeks for Spurs in their search for a manager and Paratici eventually got his own way
with the appointment of Nuno Espirito Santo, who had previously been ruled out of the running.
Fonseca, who left Roma in the summer, still wants to manage in the Premier League but insists he was not prepared to sacrifice his philosophy to comply with Paratici’s safety-first vision.
“All the details were settled,” said Fonseca, speaking to Portuguese television channel SIC. “I was really prepared for a new adventure at Tottenham but, with the general manager (Paratici) coming in, we had some disagreements that were difficult to overcome.
“I really want to coach the best teams, but I cannot compromise my ideas, I cannot compromise my values just to coach a big team. The truth is that the president (Levy) and the sporting director (Hitchen) always argued that the team should be offensive, should be attractive, should be a dominant team which went in the direction of what my teams are, in essence.
“And with the entry of the new general director, things changed a little bit. They wanted to go in another direction and, obviously, it wasn’t possible to develop something I didn’t believe in.”
