The Dane has become associated with a nearly disastrous season at Tottenham Hotspur as they escaped relegation by just two points
Sporting director Johan Lange’s future at Tottenham remains in serious doubt after their dreadful season, football.london understands.
The Dane has become one of the targets for the Spurs fans’ anger after a campaign in which the club only escaped relegation by two points thanks to Roberto De Zerbi dragging the broken club off the floor and bringing in 11 points from the final six matches to instead send West Ham into the Championship on the final day.
With four different head coaches in the past year, Lange has become the main football voice within the club and was handed a promotion in October last year from technical director to sporting director. Fabio Paratici’s brief three-month return alongside him ended with the Italian heading back home to work for Fiorentina in February. The 53-year-old has already been linked in the Italian media with a move to AC Milan this summer.
Lange’s transfer dealings, heavily led by data with changes made to the club’s scouting department, have brought mixed results since his arrival from Aston Villa in 2023. There have been numerous young signings under the 46-year-old, with more successful ones such as Lucas Bergvall and Archie Gray, who have won the supporters’ player of the year awards in successive seasons, alongside others who are yet to even play a competitive game for the club such as Kota Takai and Yang Min-hyeok.
The club’s bigger senior signings in recent years such as Dominic Solanke, Xavi Simons and Mohammed Kudus have succumbed to long-term injuries. The team chosen by De Zerbi to see off Everton on the final day was made up on the whole by players signed before Lange’s arrival, albeit that was also down to the club’s horrendous list of injuries.
Tottenham’s non-executive chairman Peter Charrington wrote in an open letter to the supporters on Monday that “the board are committed to this leadership group and will give them the stability and support they need to run this club in the right way”.
That was assumed to include Lange but football.london understands that while CEO Vinai Venkatesham remains part of the club’s plans moving forward, there are those inside and outside the north London outfit who believe it is increasingly unlikely that Lange makes it through the summer, as the football figurehead for a horrendous season, and if he does, it will be in a role supporting a new sporting director.
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Spurs are on the hunt for a world class new sporting director to fill the void left by Paratici and lead the football side of the club to ensure they never go through another season like they have before and instead push back towards the other end of the Premier League table.
De Zerbi made it clear that transfer plans for this coming summer must be put in place this week and those talks will happen with the Italian, while Tottenham are keen to bring their new football head in as soon as possible to push the club on with funds available to improve the squad alongside selling those players the head coach decides are surplus to requirements.
“We have to start to organise and to build a new team,” said De Zerbi on Sunday. “I don’t think we have now to change too many players. We have 10, 11, 12 players good enough to stay. Good enough. Like players. Especially like people, and then we have to complete the squad with the first level of players.
“First level of players because we suffered too much. I suffered a lot but I think the fans, the club, the board, the players. They suffered too much. We are Tottenham and we can’t suffer like this until the last second of the last game to stay up.
“I will be stronger. I don’t want to decide alone because football is a group – sporting director, scouting, CEO – but my target now is finished to stay up. My target is to start the pre-season with the team I have in my dream.”
Now it is down to Tottenham to ensure De Zerbi’s dreams are realised and that may not involve Lange leading the way.
