NUNO had a dream, to build a football team.
Now, having completed his Wolves project, Nuno Espirito Santo is searching out his tool bag again.
The 47-year-old is on the brink of becoming Tottenham’s new boss, where he is expected to fill the void left by his former manager and mentor Jose Mourinho, who was sacked in April.
Spurs owner Daniel Levy and new director of football Fabio Paratici are ready to grant the Portuguese coach planning permission to rebuild the London giants.
Unfortunately a section of Spurs fans are against this development – creating a social media campaign entitled #NoToNuno.
They are unhappy at the drawn-out process to find someone to replace Mourinho, who was sacked 67 days ago.
Levy’s hunt for a new boss has seen TEN candidates linked with the job.
Hansi Flick took the German job, and Julian Nagelsmann replaced him at Bayern Munich.
Levy then failed to lure Mauricio Pochettino back to Spurs from PSG, and couldn’t convince Antonio Conte to come either.
Brendan Rodgers and Erik ten Hag ruled themselves out of the running.
Ex-Roma boss Paulo Fonseca came close but they couldn’t agree on money.
Then fan protests ruled out Gennaro Gattuso, while Spanish duo Ernesto Valverde and Julen Lopetegui also showed no interest.
And now they have Nuno, who left Wolves back in May.
However this is no novice – or the dull, defensive coach he was harshly judged as in his final, injury-jinxed season at Wolves.
Spurs will be getting a coach who is meticulous in his planning, doesn’t suffer fools lightly and who is adored by his players and backroom team.
He is polite and courteous during TV interviews, but much more abrupt off screen and his press conferences could be tortuous at times.
Think blood and stone.
But he donated £250,000 of his own cash to fight food poverty in Wolverhampton.
And many Wolves fans shed a tear when he left on the final day of last season.
They regard him as their greatest boss since three-time league-winning manager Stan Cullis.
He accepted a massive rebuilding project at Wolves, inheriting the rubble left by Walter Zenga and Paul Lambert’s ill-fated regimes.
A staggering 17 players came and went in his first summer and once the dust and debris was cleared, Wolves fans had a team fit to honour the club’s glorious past.
It was a massive job, but Nuno put in proper foundations and took the Molineux club to dizzying heights their fans hardly dared dream of.
Spurs are in need of some renovation work – if Harry Kane remains – and Nuno will have the consolation of some funds for another major rebuild if the Tottenham legend goes.
But he has been over this course before.
His arrival at Molineux four years ago was also met with little fanfare by a weary Wolves support, suspicious of their board’s track record post-Zenga.
Howeverm Wolves won the Championship at a canter in his debut season, earning promotion with four games remaining and racking up 99 points in the process – thanks in no small measure to a wonder-kid from Porto.
Wolves, inspired by Ruben Neves, wrapped up the title with two games to go and were the league’s top scorers and meanest defenders, leaving Aston Villa (4th) and Leeds United (13th) in their slipstream.
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Don’t be surprised if Neves follows his old boss to London.
Two consecutive seventh placed finishes followed and Wolves fans worshipped Nuno for rekindling their European tradition by leading them to the quarter-finals of the Uefa Europa League.
And though the cracks began to appear in his final season, Nuno was in many ways a victim of his own success.
His micro squad suffered burn-out after having just 30 days to recover from a marathon 59-game season – which lasted more than a calendar year!
They were sixth in November, four points off the lead, when a sickening skull fracture to star striker Raul Jimenez during a 2-1 win at Arsenal removed the biggest support beam from Nuno’s structure.
Without their Mexican talisman, Wolves stumbled and the squad crumbled, with long-term injuries to key players such as Jonny Otto, Daniel Podence, Pedro Neto and Brazilian Marcal, leaving Nuno hamstrung.
Famed for his 3-4-3 system, Nuno was forced to stray from his best-laid plans, introducing a 4-2-3-1 system which brought him one win in 11 games – including a derby defeat by West Brom.
As the goals dried up without Jimenez, Nuno was unfairly dubbed a sterile coach. However he hauled Wolves to safety with six games to spare.
At a time when his legion of Portuguese stars couldn’t travel home to visit loved ones, family-man Nuno suffered the pain of Covid separation more than most.
However a new project at Spurs will revitalise him, after spending the summer back with his family.
He may have been a second-string goalie for most of his professional career.
But Nuno will prove more than a safe pair of hands for Spurs.
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Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
