Tottenham’s heavily-beleaguered managing director of football Fabio Paratici has tendered in his resignation after his 30-month suspension from football was upheld by Italy’s highest sports court on Thursday.
Serie A giants Juventus had their 15-point deduction suspended, albeit with several bans on directors – including Paratici and Andrea Agnelli – although Pavel Nedved was one of six former board members whose appeals were accepted upheld by the court.which enabled the club to move up to third in the league.
The statement released by Tottenham said: “Yesterday, Fabio Paratici was unsuccessful with an appeal against his Italian Football Federation (FIGC) ban on certain football related activities.
“FIFA ruled to extend the ban worldwide and, whilst there continues to be a dispute as to the scope and extent of the ban, the current worldwide ban prevents Fabio from fulfilling his duties as our Managing Director of Football. Fabio has consequently taken the decision to resign from his position at the Club with immediate effect to focus on his legal position in respect of the FIGC and FIFA rulings.”
The sword of Damocles fell swiftly on Paratici as his ban was extended worldwide by FIFA last month, to which he has filed an appeal and is still waiting to hear the result of. The club announced shortly after that the Italian would be taking a leave of absence. His ban was issued for his alleged complicity in a false accounting scandal involving Juventus – where he had worked for 11 years – that led to the club’s board resigning en masse in November.
As for the day-to-day business, Spurs will be resuming their search for a new head coach without their managing director. Paratici obviously would have played a dominant role in identifying and hiring sacked manager Antonio Conte’s successor. In the interim, Cristian Stellini, the assistant to Conte, has taken charge of the team until the end of the season.
Spurs chairman Daniel Levy said: “This has been a stressful time for Fabio and his family. We wanted to ensure that we allowed for due process to be followed. Fabio is a man who lives and breathes football – we wish him well.
“As outlined in our year end results, we started several months ago to restructure our football operations and last week announced the appointment of Scott Munn as Chief Football Officer to head up all the departments. We shall continue to strengthen our football functions over the coming months.”