Tottenham Hotspur caretaker manager Cristian Stellini wiped away tears as he explained the experience working with refugees in Italy that makes him a very different coach to Antonio Conte. ‘I want only players with smiles, because we are playing football. We are playing for Tottenham!’
Stellini was Conte’s assistant manager starting from Siena in 2010-11, then Juventus, had a brief period on his own in charge of Alessandria before reuniting with his boss at Inter and Tottenham.
Now that Conte has terminated his contract with Spurs by mutual consent, Stellini has taken the main job until the end of the season.
In a tearful press conference, the 48-year-old revealed the reasons why he has a very different approach to Conte, and it is largely due to his lived experience.
During an 18-month ban in a 2012 match-fixing scandal, Stellini could not work with professionals, so he became coach of a team of refugees and asylum seekers in Turin called Survivors.
“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 life. It’s really emotional for me. I grew as a man,” said Stellini.
“That was the importance of my job there, and what I learned was that, back home, they had more problems than me. Obviously, I was sad for my situation but they smiled, they worked hard, they came.”
Many of them didn’t have shoes to play in, yet Stellini helped them to win the Balon Mundial title against players who would go on to top flight careers.
He particularly recalls a boxer from Afghanistan who wanted everyone to call him ‘Robben’ and had spent 24 hours hiding inside a spare tyre to make the crossing.
The Survivors team also won with a Moroccan goalkeeper who only had one eye and saved three penalties.
“They taught me a lot of things about enjoying your life. I used football to create a unit. It was a big experience. I could write a book.”
With all that in mind, Stellini has short shrift for those who suggest Tottenham are currently in crisis.
“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? It is speculation to try to punch Tottenham, this is what it is.”
While Conte has sometimes been accused of being too harsh on his players and trying to push them into his existing systems, Stellini is taking a more human approach.
“Who you were in your playing career is definitely important in how you work and your approach to the game. You expect that the players will approach the game like you did,” he said. “But you cannot expect that they are all like you. You have to accept that, and allow the players to be themselves, not how you want.
“You have to use passion in the way you train, to talk to the players, to let them understand what you need, but they have to be themselves.
“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!”
After discussing a meeting the players had with the staff, urging them to communicate more, Stellini feels they are now on the same page.
“You have to improve yourself as a man. We’re not just speaking about players, we speaking about human beings. This type of experience, if you react in the right way, makes you better as a human being.”