No director of football for Jose Mourinho at Tottenham, for now

When news of Jose Mourinho’s assistant coaches at Tottenham Hotspur were released yesterday, a lot of football observers got excited about one particular name. Yes, “Joao Sacramento” is an excellent name, but that’s not who I’m referring to. Reportedly, Mourinho had reached out to Lille to discuss not only the poaching of assistant coaches Santiago and Nuno Santos, but also their technical director Luis Campos, who Mourinho was interested in making his director of football at Spurs.

Santos has a good reputation and the idea of him taking care of potential transfers and other medium to long-term strategy sounded like a good idea. It allows some of those details to be taken off the plate of Jose, allowing him to focus on the coaching.

Unfortunately, it’s looking like that’s less likely, at least for now. Lyall Thomas of Sky Sports tweeted today that Lille, despite letting Sacramento and Santos go, are very unlikely to allow Santos to leave for north London.

And there’s more! According to RMC Sport (via Sport Witness), Lille manager Christoph Galtier was apparently “annoyed” by Mourinho’s meddling, and made it clear in a recent press conference.

“Each has their way of doing things. He called Luis (Campos). I don’t know if it’s [a knife in the back], but (read in sarcastic tone) it’s very classy to do things like that… I was annoyed, frustrated because the timing isn’t good. Each will judge the way things are done. What’s most important is that I agree with the decision the president took.

“To be totally transparent, my president informed me of the situation and told me he would let Joao and Nuno go. After a long talk, I understand his decision. It’s a shame, the timing is very bad. That’s how football is these days but what can he do against two people who want to leave and exit the project for live something else? He gave them that possibility. He could’t do anything else”.

Moreover, the Evening Standard is also reporting that it’s looking like Mourinho won’t get any kind of director of football or technical director at all, but it might be something they’ll look into at a future date.

So, for now it looks the the Special One will be the only one.