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Football London
Football London
Sport
Alasdair Gold

Fabio Paratici appoints ex-Real Madrid scout as Spurs' new-look backroom structure takes shape

Tottenham Hotspur's managing director of football Fabio Paratici has continued to shape his backroom staff with the appointment of Jeff Vetere earlier this month, football.london understands.

Paratici conducted a thorough review of Spurs' scouting department, as well as other areas of the club, with then technical performance director Steve Hitchen after arriving from Juventus in north London in the summer of 2021. Following Hitchen's resignation in February this year, the 50-year-old Italian pushed forward with the plans to restructure the scouting department with an increased budget.

Those who know Paratici say his skills lie in his working of the transfer market - seen as one of the best in the world when it comes to the trading of players - as well as in his strength in dealing with boardroom figures and communicating with the hierarchy of clubs, including his own, and pushing through what he wants to happen to improve the team.

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The Italian's method of dealing with the remainder of the football side of the club is to surround himself with talented individuals, who are all experts in dealing with different facets and then report into him, creating a successful working management structure beneath him and that progress is now well under way at Spurs with a string of newly-created roles.

In July Paratici appointed a new performance director in Gretar Steinsson, Everton's former head of recruitment and development and the former Bolton defender has already been a constant presence at first team matches, on the pre-season tours and watching academy matches.

He was joined on August 1 by a head of football strategy in Andy Scoulding, who was taken from Rangers, where he was head of scouting for four years, following previous positions the London-born specialist had with the FA, Salford City, Olympiacos and Valencia. The highly-rated 40-year-old is already understood to have made a good impression on staff at the north London club.

The duo will be covering the wide remit of Hitchen's role and then there was also a new chief scout brought in by Paratici in the shape of compatriot Leonardo Gabbanini, formerly of Watford and Udinese, who began work at the club this summer.

The new structure did not end there as changes were made at an academy level. Former Manchester City head of academy coaching Simon Davies was appointed in mid-August as head of coaching methodology to ensure a close link between the first team and the youth levels with academy manager Dean Rastrick.

There were also new emerging talent scout appointments in the summer, including Chris Scudder, who worked at West Ham, Derby, Brentford and Leeds previously. Those new scouts were heavily involved in Spurs' signing of highly-rated 17-year-old Sheffield United striker Will Lankshear towards the end of the transfer window for a reported £2m fee.

There were also academy coaching additions with three-time Premier League winner Yaya Toure taking up the role of U16s coach while former Tottenham striker Jermain Defoe began working across as a coach across the U17 to U21 age categories.

football.london understands that a couple of weeks ago 56-year-old Vetere also began working for Spurs, becoming the latest addition to Paratici's scouting structure in a role that will include scouting internationally for the club's development squad.

Vetere was a scout for a short time at Real Madrid before making the move to Newcastle. He later became chief scout at Aston Villa before a spell as technical director at Charlton and then sporting director at Birmingham. He has been out of the game since 2018 but has now returned to flesh out Paratici's ever-growing structure at Tottenham with further experience of the game.

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