Igor Tudor was a fine player and an uncompromising defender. He was tough and he was smart. He was a component of the formidable Juventus side of the late 90s and early 2000s and played alongside some of the best in the game, including Zinedine Zidane, Didier Deschamps and Edgar Davids.
His playing career is a distant memory, though, and his managerial achievements pale beside it.
As a manager, he is nowhere near the aristocracy of the game and yet on Friday afternoon, it was announced that Tottenham Hotspur have chosen him as the man to lead them away from the looming spectre of relegation from the Premier League.
The truth is that Spurs have entrusted their top-flight survival to a here-today-gone-tomorrow serial under-achiever who has won one trophy in his 13 years as a club manager. And that was the Croatian Cup with Hajduk Split in 2013.
They have not, it would be fair to say, gone for the cream of the crop. If Tudor’s managerial record was to be described as ‘uneven’, that would be distinctly generous to a boss who has gone through Hajduk Split, PAOK, Karabukspor, Galatasaray, Udinese, Hellas Verona, Marseille, Lazio and Juventus like a dose of salts.
It seems hard to believe but what Spurs have done is taken a £100m gamble on a managerial non-entity, rather than try to attract a coach of the calibre of Roberto de Zerbi or Andoni Iraola, so that they will be free to appoint their dream candidate, Mauricio Pochettno, this summer.
Igor Tudor is a gigantic risk for Tottenham – he could well lead them to relegation this season
Tottenham’s dream is to appoint Mauricio Pochettino, who is currently the USA boss – he could arrive with them in the Championship
They know that Pochettino, the USA coach, will not be free to join them until after the co-hosts’ involvement in the World Cup is over. Rather than appoint a permanent coach of quality now and abandon the Pochettino dream, they have taken a huge risk on Tudor helping them to retain their Premier League status in the months ahead.
It may turn out to be an inspired move. There is some statistical support for the claim that he has an instant positive impact at a new club before things turn sour. But it might also turn out to be one of the most egregious examples in top-flight history of a club putting the cart before the horse.
Because if Tudor reverts to type and the results he achieves are ordinary, then Spurs will be relegated and when Pochettino arrives in the summer, it will be to take charge of a Championship team. His California tan will wear off quickly on visits to Preston and Portsmouth.
Because this is not an easy job. In fact, Tudor, 47, faces a hellishly hard task to keep Spurs out of the bottom three. When Thomas Frank was fired earlier this week, Tottenham were just five points clear of the relegation zone and they are trending down.
The fixtures that await him are tough. First up is a home game against league leaders Arsenal a week on Sunday and if that will be a free hit and a chance, perhaps, to prey on some uncertainty creeping into the minds of their north London rivals, the fixtures that follow do not offer much respite.
They go like this: Fulham away, Crystal Palace at home, Liverpool away, Nottingham Forest at home and Sunderland away. A couple of those games are against fellow strugglers but Tudor’s task is complicated by the fact that the pressure of the drop will weigh more heavily on Spurs than on rivals who are less grand.
That is the way it goes in a relegation fight. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. And Spurs and their crowd are feeling the ignominy and the shame of being sucked into a relegation battle while teams like West Ham and Leeds United are scrapping for all they are worth.
In the circumstances, it is hard to see why Spurs would not have gone for De Zerbi, who is available, or Iraola, the Bournemouth manager, who might be. De Zerbi would have sent a blot of lightning through the club and shocked them away from the bottom three with his intensity and his brightness. Iraola is a top class coach who would have all but guaranteed survival.
Tottenham face a difficult run of fixtures and are just five points ahead of West Ham in 18th
It is hard to see why Tottenham did not go for somebody like Roberto De Zerbi (pictured), who is available after leaving Marseille, or tried to tempte Bournemouth boss Andoni Iraola
But the choice of Tudor is another worrying hint that the hierarchy at Tottenham is struggling to forge a path through a game it does not understand in the wake of last summer’s departure of former chairman Daniel Levy.
Levy was the centre of the club. Everything went through him. And even if he was deeply unpopular with many fans because of a perceived lack of ambition, things never got this perilous on his watch. And they did win the Europa League in the last months of his tenure last year.
Now, there is a more amorphous group in charge, a collection of people that has started to look like a coalition of the damned, a group that includes various members of the family of billionaire owner Joe Lewis, chief executive Vinai Venkatesham and sporting director Johan Lange.
The appointment of Tudor is another step towards the cliff-edge. If fortune favours them, he will pull them back from the precipice but even a year in the Championship could cost the club £100m in lost revenue. It is a lot of faith to put in a man who won the Croatian Cup 13 years ago.
