TTLB Opinion: Should Tottenham replace Ange Postecoglou with Francesco Farioli?

With the difficult season the Tottenham Hotspur have endured, many have raised questions about Ange Postecoglou’s credentials to continue being in charge at Hotspur Way, the Australian head coach does have an opportunity to win a silverware for the Lilywhites this week as the North Londoners prepare to face Manchester United in Europa League finals at Bilbao but many suggest that it would still not be enough for the former Celtic manager to continue at N17 given their domestic placings in the 17th spot, the bare minimum required to stay in the English top tier and the chiefs at Hotspur Way have already started looking out for possible replacements if the North Londoners are to sack Ange and Roberto de Zerbi’s former assistant Francesco Farioli who is currently incharge of Ajax has been among the potential options.

The thing is, Daniel Levy has brought in Postecoglou to restore the fading belief at N17 while bringing back that front-footed football which the North Londoners weren’t playing under the likes of Nuno Santos, Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte. But this season we have seen how Ange’s system has a lot of structural flaws, and this is where a need to get a different head coach comes in…

Now while Farioli is an interesting option, questions are raised about whether he is ready to take on a project as big as the one at Tottenham. And it is also whether Levy wants to continue with the project that he started with Ange, given how Farioli is different and more modern in his approach to squad building.

So let’s get into it: who is Francesco Farioli, and why are Tottenham considering him to take on the head coach role?

Farioli is at Ajax at the moment and has been regarded by many as a part of this new wave of positional play managers who go on to mix Pep Guardiola’s field occupation philosophy with Roberto De Zerbi’s tempo dictation. But that being said, the 36-year-old doesn’t really rely on that chaotic versatility like De Zerbi (like what we saw from his Brighton game in, game out).

Farioli, to me, is more system-driven in his approach and is more organised than RDZ, which in a way is very different from how Ange plays (more emotion-first, which in a way translates to playing with intensity over control).

If we get into some of the key elements of how Farioli plays, he deploys a really structured 2-3-2-3 and 3-2-5 pattern in the build-up phases. And he does demand a sense of resistance from opponent press in the first and second phases before those trigger ball releases. He likes his first-phase players to build more under pressure. And in terms of when his side is facing transition, he likes it handed with more discipline than chaos (again, the latter is generally how Ange operates).

Let’s say he takes charge of Tottenham tomorrow; what are the things he would change?

So if Farioli were to be pushed into the North Londoners’ dressing room tomorrow, the first thing he would do is to go from a 2-3-5 set of build-up to a 2-3-2-3 buildup where he has two natural pivots (Bentancur + Gray/Sarr). Then rather than doing two-sided inversions that we are used to seeing from Porro and Udogie (which is one of the reasons behind defensive imbalance at the moment), he would push more one-sided inversions instead. Then he would go on to pull the central defenders more into the deeper zones to get that space to operate through the midfield instead of how Ange likes to bypass that straight into the front line.

One more thing I would expect him to be doing is taking away this wide 10 role from Maddison and Kulusevski, which, let’s face it, is not adding any layers to how Spurs play. He would like both of them to play more as between-the-lines operators. When playing in Europe (or against teams with multiple bridge creators in their system), he would rather have a mid-block fallout (so this way you avoid all the thrashing from the likes of Newcastle and Villa).

Given how he operates, he would love the high-technical midfielders that Tottenham have in the current roster; those ball-playing centre-backs would do his style wonders, and then the high-intensity wide forwards. See, if Tottenham were to bring him to helm, he wouldn’t need an overhaul; he would, in a sense, just need some sort of justice alignment to fit into his way of operating.

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TTLB Opinion

If Daniel Levy believes that Ange Postecoglou is emotionally right but structurally limited, then Francesco Farioli is the logical heir to integrate into the same philosophy but more in a safer manner.