Rio Ferdinand has claimed that Tottenham should have appointed Dan Ashworth instead of Fabio Paratici, as he told his own YouTube channel.
In the summer, Spurs made a number of changes, including bringing in Nuno Espirito Santo as their new boss and Paratici as Managing Director, or the man simply in charge of transfer dealings.
But Ferdinand feels Brighton’s technical director, Ashworth, who also used to work for England and played a huge role in the influx of young stars now coming through, was the one that Daniel Levy should have targetted instead.
The former centre-back feels it’s ‘fashionable’ to go down the route of bringing in a ‘foreign’ director.
“If I was Spurs, I would have gone and got Dan Ashworth,” said Ferdinand. “Brighton fans will want to kill me.
“But that guy, meticulous, what he does with a shoe-string budget at Brighton, what he has done with England and all the young players coming through. Setting the blueprint there.
“Dan Ashworth, I would put him up there. It’s fashionable to go foreign now. To go and get foreign directors of football or technical directors when we have got a good few of them sitting here. It’s crazy.”
Ashworth, 50, has a strong reputation in English football and if Levy pushed for his signature then it would have been a very strong appointment.
But that doesn’t mean that Paratici’s credentials should be ignored because he did an outstanding job at Juventus.
And given the mess he has walked into at Spurs, he has done pretty well in the circumstances so far, including bringing in new faces such as Bryan Gil, Pierluigi Gollini and Cristian Romero.
The Harry Kane saga helps no one, but all of that was seemingly an issue before Paratici walked through the doors of the North London club.
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