Andre Villas-Boas believes eight years of conflicting ideas on the touchline is the biggest reason that Tottenham Hotspur are now staring relegation from the Premier League in the face.
The 48-year-old was manager of Tottenham 13 years ago at a time when they were regularly challenging to qualify for the Champions League – and he even went on to set a club record points tally during his spell in charge.
Since his departure in December 2013, the North London side have chopped and changed managers – Roberto De Zerbi is the ninth permanent hire since then – and while shocked at Spurs’ demise, Villas Boas concedes that too many poor decisions have finally caught up with them.
‘It’s a real shock,’ he told Daily Mail Sport. ‘In eight years, you have totally different methods, totally different ways of thinking, totally different ways of implementing philosophies and probably this has led to the instability right now, which adds to the pressure of being in the relegation zone.
‘That pressure is second to none.
‘There are clubs and players that have experience in being in those places that can save themselves all the time.
‘But there are other ones like Tottenham which can find it difficult. It’s really, really hard to see.’
Villas-Boas fully understands the complexities that come with entering a club wracked with instability and uncertainty over the future.
When he was elected as president of Porto, the club was in a particularly difficult moment financially and sticking to a plan that they believed in was key. They are now top of the Portuguese league, in the semi-final of the domestic cup and face Nottingham Forest in the second leg of their Europa League quarter-final on Thursday night.
For Tottenham, the lack of foresight to stick to a plan has been their undoing.
‘Eight managers in five years doesn’t help because all of them are very, very different to one another, different methods, different way of selecting players, so this leads to instability as well,’ Villas-Boas, speaking in his capacity as a Laureus Ambassador ahead of next week’s awards in Madrid, added.
‘What we have done at Porto, for example, when we found instability in the first year, we found stability right now in this year.
‘We opted to renew our manager. Not only because of the results, but because of the relationship he has with the structure.
‘Structure meaning scouting teams and youth level teams in the way he promotes youth players coming through as well. So we believe in the stability going into the future.
‘With Tottenham, you probably never had that in any of the cases because there is the pressure of results.
‘But they have changed managers, they have changed the leading structures, they have changed also sports directors as well, from [Franco] Baldini to [Fabio] Paratici to the current sports director [Johan Lange].’
Asked if Roberto De Zerbi, a man who is in firefighting mode after losing his first game in charge away to Sunderland while their relegation rivals picked up crucial points, can finally set Spurs on a path to prosperity, Villas-Boas remained bullish.
‘De Zerbi has to deliver results,’ he concluded.
‘It’s a long term contract anyway, so probably they have found out that those things that I mentioned here [about instability of ideas], De Zerbi will be able to deliver to them.
‘And if eventually they go down, they can be back up because they have the infrastructure and the quality of the players and the resources to do it.’
The 2026 Laureus World Sports Awards will be staged in Madrid, a global city of sport, on Monday 20th April. Visit: www.laureus.com
