Gennaro Gattuso has agreed to become Tottenham Hotspur's next coach.
The former Rangers midfielder, who elected to step away from managerial positions at Napoli and Fiorentina in the past two months, was offered the Tottenham job earlier on Thursday with the fine detail of the Italian's contract being worked on this evening.
Hiring Gattuso represents an aggressive about-turn for both the 43-year-old and Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy. Fiorentina today announced the termination “by mutual agreement” of a 23-day-old deal that would have seen Gattuso formally appointed at the Serie A club's coach on July 1.
Tottenham, meanwhile, stepped away from an agreement reached with Paulo Fonseca last week that he succeed Jose Mourinho as the club's full-time manager.
Fonseca had been recruited by Fabio Paratici, Tottenham's newly appointed Managing Director Football as a relatively low-cost replacement for the man whom Daniel Levy dismissed in April, only for the club's chairman to call a halt to the deal.
Record Sport understands that Tottenham's pivot toward Gattuso followed what has been described as “a disastrous” meeting between Levy and the former AS Roma, Shakhtar Donetsk, Braga and FC Porto coach.
For their part, Fonseca's camp briefed that the Portuguese had stepped away from the agreement he and Paratici concluded in Rome on eight days ago because “Fonseca had not been allowed to build a coaching staff”. After-tax salary was not an issue.
Should Gattuso's Premier League contract be concluded as expected, Tottenham will become the eighth club of an eight-year managerial career.
Brief spells at Sion, Palermo and OFI Crete were followed by two-season reigns at Pisa, Milan and Napoli. His first year at Napoli delivered his sole trophy as a coach, the Coppa Italia.
Gattuso left his position at the volatile Naples club following a fifth-placed finish in Serie A, then walked away from his Fiorentina contract after his new employers failed to honour promises made over player recruitment for the 2021-22 season.
A club statement said: "ACF Fiorentina and Mister Rino Gattuso, by mutual agreement, have decided not to follow up on the previous agreements and therefore not to start the next football season together."
