Tottenham Hotspur have today confirmed the appointment of Italian Franco Baldini as the club’s new Technical Director following the fifty two year olds departure from AS Roma earlier this month. Baldini has been brought in to help Andre Villas-Boas in the transfer market with the Portuguese manager looking to avoid a repeat of last summer when Spurs were slow to react in the transfer market and ended up missing out of Leandro Damiao and Joao Moutinho late on in the transfer window.
Daniel Levy has released a statement this morning which highlighted Franco Baldini’s qualities in bringing the best quality of players to White Hart Lane as well as praising the Italian’s widespread knowledge of players across the globe:
[quote]Franco is extremely well respected in the industry, possessing an extensive knowledge of players around the world.[/quote]
It has been mooted for a while that although Daniel Levy is known to favour the rather more continental two tier system of having a Director of Football alongside the Manager the decision to pursue Franco Baldini had been one really pushed by Villas-Boas with the former Porto manager having turned down a move to Paris Saint Germain this summer on the condition that Tottenham would back him in the transfer market as Villas-Boas looks to take Tottenham to the next step, which is qualification for the UEFA Champions League.
Chairman Levy confirmed that Baldini would be mostly involved with player recruitment rather than the more extensive jobs a Director of Football takes on at other clubs, “He will strengthen our football management team, particularly in the field of recruitment,” before adding that Baldini would also assist partly in footballing matters, “[Baldini] will work closely with Andre Villas-Boas and Tim Sherwood across all levels on the playing side.” This under normal circumstances would start alarm bells ringing for supporters however Baldini is not short of experience on the football side having been a player himself as well as assistant manager to Fabio Capello during his four year stint as England manager.
Franco Baldini has been responsible for the recruitment of players at AS Roma for the past two seasons with huge talent being brought into the Stadio Olimpico for example Michael Bradley, Miralem Pjanic and Marquinhos although there have been some rather less successful transfers in the form of Federico Balzaretti. Franco Baldini has held himself personally responsible for Roma’s poor season in the 2012-2013 campaign just finished with the Giallorossi finishing sixth in the table, Baldini confessed he had made mistakes which led to Roma’s poor performance over the course of the season, “I made at least four or five in-confessable errors.” Baldini would go onto add that appointing Zdenek Zeman was a mistake and not a decision completely thought through, “I can say that Zeman was not the right choice. We wanted to give the fans a spectacle, but were not ready to offer guaranteed results.”
Tottenham Hotspur supporters can however look to the Baldini/Villas-Boas partnership with high hopes with Baldini boasting a widespread knowledge of Europe’s better players and with Andre Villas-Boas intent on bringing a certain style of play to Tottenham Hotspur it is expected the two are a pairing made to work well.
