Stellini has been appointed as Spurs’ caretaker boss after head coach Antonio Conte left the Premier League “by mutual consent” on Sunday.
Cristian Stellini has taken over as interim head coach at Tottenham Hotspur, after it was confirmed on Sunday that Antonio Conte has left the Premier League club following just 16 months in charge.
Conte goes as Spurs tenure descends into acrimony
Conte was widely expected to leave at the end of the season, but has departed now “by mutual consent” after a breakdown in relations with Tottenham. In an extraordinary press conference after Sunday’s 3-3 league draw with Southampton, the Italian tore into the culture at Spurs, blaming the club’s lack of a winning mentality and its “selfish” players for its silverware drought.
Stellini, who was number two to Conte at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, will lead the North Londoners until the end of the season. First-team coach Ryan Mason - who had a short spell as caretaker boss in 2021 - has been appointed as interim assistant coach.
Who is Cristian Stellini?
A long-time assistant to Conte, Stellini already has experience of stepping into his compatriot’s shoes in the Tottenham dugout. In November, the 48-year-old oversaw Spurs’ Champions League victory over Marseille in the absence of the suspended Conte, and then took charge of the first team for five games during his compatriot’s recent recovery from gall-bladder surgery.
He initially steered Spurs to Premier League victories over Manchester City, West Ham and Chelsea, but his 100% record was punctured at the stat of March by a surprise FA Cup defeat to Sheffield United, and a league loss to Wolves.
A former defender, Stellini spent his entire playing career in Italy - chiefly in Serie B, the second tier of Italian league soccer. He did, however, manage 41 top-flight appearances across spells at Como, Modena and Bari.
After retiring in 2010, he had a brief stint as an assistant coach at Siena, before joining Conte’s backroom team at Juventus the following year. However, he left the Bianconeri in 2012 after the Italian Football Federation handed him a two-and-a-half-year ban over match-fixing, a suspension that related to his time as a player at Bari at the end of his playing days.
On his return to soccer, Stellini worked as a youth coach at Genoa from 2015 to 2017, before enduring brief, unsuccessful stint as head coach of third-division Italian club Alessandria. Appointed by ‘I Grigi’ in June 2017, he was sacked just five months later, having won just three games in all competitions.
In 2019, Stellini was reunited with Conte when he was named assistant at Inter Milan. In his two seasons at the San Siro, he helped the Nerazzurri to the 2020/21 Serie A title - the club’s first for 11 years.
Stellini then followed Conte to Tottenham in November 2021, when the latter replaced Nuno Espirito Santo as head coach.