Tottenham have ended their rollercoaster search for a new manager by confirming the appointment of Nuno Espirito Santo.
Seventy two days since Jose Mourinho’s sacking in April, former Wolves boss Nuno was announced as Spurs’ head coach on a contract until 2023.
Spurs turned to Nuno after talks with a number of other managers failed to result in an appointment.
Nuno had emerged as the latest leading candidate with new managing director Fabio Paratici pushing his claims having been previously interested in taking the 47 year-old to Juventus.
Following Mourinho’s dismissal, the likes of Bayern Munich-bound Julian Nagelsmann, Leicester’s Brendan Rodgers and Ajax’s Erik Ten Hag all proved out of reach.
Former boss Mauricio Pochettino, Antonio Conte and Gennaro Gattuso were among the managers Spurs then spoke to about the vacancy.
Spurs’s players will begin returning for pre-season next week and Nuno said: ‘When you have a squad with quality and talent, we want to make the fans proud and enjoy.
‘It’s an enormous pleasure and honour (to be here), there’s joy and I’m happy and looking forward to starting work.
‘We don’t have any days to lose and we must start working immediately as pre-season starts in a few days.’
Nuno pledged the club’s ‘philosophy’ will be to give everyone an opportunity to better themselves.
‘It’s simple, we improve players, we try to make them better, to improve them every day and by that, it’s no matter which age the player is – young, old, experienced, no experience at all – it doesn’t matter,’ the Portuguese coach said.
‘In our minds, we put the players in the middle and we see what we can do to make them better.
‘How can we improve them? How can we find a better solution for them to make their job easier? How can we make them perform better? If we achieve that, our team will improve, our club will improve and this is our philosophy.’
On Nuno’s appointment, Levy added: ‘First of all, I’d like to welcome Nuno to the Club. We should like to thank our supporters for all their patience throughout this process.
‘I’ve spoken already about the need to revert back to our core DNA of playing attacking, entertaining football and Fabio and I believe Nuno is the man who can take our talented group of players, embrace our young players coming through and build something special.’
Nuno arrived at Wolves in the summer of 2017 when the club were in the Championship and led them to second tier triumph in his debut season in England.
The 47-year-old then achieved back-to-back seventh-placed finishes with Wolves and also took them to the Europa League quarter-finals in 2020.
Earlier in his career, he managed Valencia in the Champions League and Rio Ave in the Europa League.
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