Tottenham Hotspur’s managerial search appears to be running hotter and faster than their search for a new Director of Football, but maybe not for much longer. We haven’t heard a lot about potential names for that position in recent weeks, but a new one just popped up in BILD — there are now reports that Bayern Munich technical director Marco Neppe is interested in the Spurs job, whether that be Director of Football, or recruitment director.
Update Marco Neppe: Tottenham is actually interested in Bayern’s technical director, meanwhile there is a loose request. Nothing is decided, Neppe was part of the squad planning for the new season at FC Bayern yesterday.
— Tobi Altschäffl (@altobelli13) June 1, 2023
So the wording is a little weird here — “actually interested,” “loose request,” etc. I’m not sure I’d read too much into it, as it sounds more like this is just a German guy writing in his second (or third?) language. But it’s an interesting connection regardless.
I don’t know much about Bayern’s backroom staff or about Neppe in particular, but there are people in the Carty Free slack channel that do. Apparently there’s been something of a palace coup d’etat at Bayern, with sporting director Hasan “Brazzo” Salihamidžić and CEO Oliver Kahn both being sacked on the same day that Bayern won the Bundesliga ahead of Borussia Dortmund. As I understand it, Neppe reports to Salihamidžić (who reports to Kahn) and having your boss and your boss’s boss both be shown the gate is a little too much chaos, so he’s looking for his own offramp.
Neppe is known for being a smart guy, the kind of executive who sits on the bench and is extremely engaged with what’s happening on the pitch (which sounds like what Fabio Paratici used to do). His role at Bayern had a lot more to do with recruitment and player identification than running an entire football operation, and so it kind of depends on what Spurs are actually looking for. At worst this would be a lateral move for him, but again there’s just so much we don’t know and we’re relying on a single tweet from a BILD journalist, so all of this should be taken with a grain of salt.
It also seems possible that Neppe could be handed Salihamidžić’s old job or an improved role to keep him at Bayern and this link is simply a backup plan in case the chips fall in a way that he’s not happy with. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened, that’s for sure.
But on the surface, I’m not opposed to poaching the TD and recruitment head of one of the best clubs in world football if only because they appear to be a bigger and hotter mess than Spurs are at the moment. And it does mean that Spurs are active in finding someone for that vacant Paratici role, or something close to it. And that’s good!
