BREAKING: Fabio Paratici’s football ban extended globally by FIFA

Yesterday, Tottenham Hotspur posted a video of Managing Director of Football Fabio Paratici explaining the club’s short term vision in the wake of head coach Antonio Conte’s departure. The video was apparently filmed in an Italian hotel as Paratici was preparing for a hearing, now delayed until May, of his punishment for playing a role in Juventus’ “plusvalenza” financial scandal.

The video was roundly mocked by Spurs fans and others, but Paratici now has much bigger problems — this morning, FIFA acceded to the demands of the Italian sports court that punished Paratici with a 30-month ban from Italian football, and banned him from ALL of FIFA-sanctioned football worldwide. The news is being reported by The Athletic and elsewhere.

Here is the full statement on the ruling from FIFA, as reported in The Athletic:

“FIFA can confirm that following a request by the FIGC, the chairperson of FIFA Disciplinary Committee has decided to extend the sanctions imposed by FIGC on several football officials to have worldwide effect.”

This instantly makes Paratici’s job as Tottenham’s director of football untenable. As of now, he is (pending appeal) banned from any contact with any football agent, nor can he work with football clubs on the process of bringing new signings to the club in the transfer window. But according to Sky, he CAN attend meetings at Spurs, which is something, I guess.

So what can Tottenham do? Well, Daniel Levy SHOULD fire him immediately. This is a huge black eye and embarrassment to the entire football club. Paratici is the guy who was not only steering the ship, but also apparently taking the lead on who would replace Antonio Conte as permanent head coach. As of today, he can’t do any of those things, so what’s the point keeping him around?

The question is, will Daniel Levy do that? The club has not commented publicly on any of the accusations or punishments levied at Paratici since the plusvalenza scandal broke a few months ago. They’re currently pretending it doesn’t exist. Paratici also has his appeals process, which is now set for May 10 April 19 (see below), and there’s a big part of me that thinks that Spurs might just try and kick the can down the road until they exhaust all appeals and recourse.

They shouldn’t. This is ridiculous. There isn’t a single thing that Fabio Paratici does that can’t be done just as well or better by someone else. It obviously puts Levy in a position where he’s not only suffering another public humiliation over the guy he hand-picked to guide the club, but he’s also throwing the entire managerial search into chaos. However, standing by his man would in a lot of ways only make things worse as Paratici becomes a lame duck while he tries to convince everyone that he didn’t actually commit crimes.

What a club. Just impeccably run. Never a dull day at Tottenham Hotspur.

Update: The accused former Juventus executives will have an appeals hearing on April 19, which will determine whether their punishment holds. I would guess it’s unlikely that we hear anything from Tottenham until then.