Spurs crisis? I once coached side of refugees ...now they had it tough
EMOTIONAL STELLINI OPENS UP ON HIS HARDEST ROLE AS A BOSS
CRISTIAN STELLINI had to wipe away tears as he opened up about one of his previous coaching jobs which put Tottenham’s ‘troubles’ into perspective.
To the outside world, Spurs have lurched back into a crisis with Antonio Conte’s sacking last Sunday and the extending of managing director of football Fabio Paratici’s ban, from Italy to worldwide.
But Tottenham’s acting head coach Stellini sees things very differently, thanks largely to the time he spent coaching a group of asylum seekers and refugees in 2012 and 2013 while serving his own ban following a match-fixing scandal in Italy.
That period peaked with him leading his group to victory in an Italian tournament called the Balon Mundial (right).
And, choking back tears, the 48-year-old said: “It’s very emotional, talking about that experience. It allowed me to grow as a man, not as a professional, because they were not professional, they were refugees.
“They tried to have something new in their lives and what I learned was that, back home, they had more problems than me. Obviously, I was sad for my own situation but they smiled and worked hard. We had 35 people coming without shoes, with socks, and they asked, ‘Can I train?’.
“We said, ‘Yes, but you need shoes’. They said, ‘Shoes? I play without shoes’. There was one from Afghanistan, many from Morocco, a lot from Ghana, DR Congo, many more from Africa.
“The guy from Afghanistan tried to come on a dinghy but they took him back to Turkey not once but three times.
“The next step for him was hiding in a big spare tyre. He hid there until Greece, for maybe 24 hours, and when he arrived, they brought him out all curled up, it was impossible for him to extend his legs.
“He was a boxer and also not a perfect man – he was guilty of something and had to hide in Italy, and he needed a lawyer. “But he came to train every day with a smile and said, ‘You have to call me Robben’.
“They taught me a lot of things about enjoying your life.
“We played many matches and won a tournament known as Mundialito in Turin.
“The last was a tournament with national teams – you needed seven players from, say, Brazil to call yourselves Brazil. We were the only team with so many refugees.
“We won, but with a goalkeeper with one eye.
“All the players said to me, ‘If we go to penalties, he has got to be the keeper’.
“I said to them, ‘But he is without an eye’.
“They said, ‘But he is the top goalkeeper, he saves every penalty’.
“In the semi-final and final he saved three penalties – and we won the tournament. I asked the players, ‘How is this possible?’ And they said, ‘It’s about desire’.”
Stellini must now convince Tottenham’s stars to find a similar kind of desire – but he also wants to put a smile back on their faces.
He added: “This is one of the first things I said to the players, ‘I don’t want sad faces here’.
“I want only players with smiles, because we are playing football. We are playing for Tottenham Hotspur.
“You cannot feel that it’s ‘a crisis’ when you have a club around you, when you have fans around you.
“Crisis is a different thing. Crisis means you cannot play football. When we had Covid, that was a crisis for everyone. “It’s a crisis when you don’t have fans in your stadium.
“But now we play, we have everything, we have 10 games to play and the club can take a decision in the future.
“We feel at home here. “Crisis? That word is just speculation to try to punch Tottenham, this is what it is.”
One of the first things I said to the players, ‘I don’t want sad faces here’