Cristian Stellini Unfazed by Tottenham Chaos After Coaching Shoeless Refugees

Cristian Stellini, the interim-boss of Tottenham, has spoken about how coaching a team of refugees taught him what a real crisis is. Stellini left his job working with Antonio Conte at Juventus under a cloud in 2012 after being given a 2½-year ban for his part in a match-fixing scandal. However, he found redemption and a new perspective as the coach of Survivors, an ever-changing squad of players in Turin that included Africans who wanted to fight each other, an Afghan boxer on the run and a one-eyed Moroccan goalkeeper. Stellini’s Survivors were also champions, thanks to an unlikely hero. The 48-year-old Italian said: “We changed many players because sometimes they arrived and sometimes they didn’t. I saw this guy for the first time on the bench and said, ‘Who’s this?’. “We were in this tournament and all the players said to me, ‘If we go to penalties, he has to be the keeper’. I said, ‘But he is without an eye’ and they said, ‘But he saves every penalty’. “In the semi-final and final he saved three penalties and we won the tournament. I said, ‘How is this possible?’ And they said, ‘It’s about desire’.”