Lille owner Gerard Lopez says there is no truth to the stories that Jose Mourinho and Tottenham stole two of their coaches.
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Assistant manager Joao Sacramento and goalkeeping coach Nuno Santos
left the Ligue 1 club in November to join Mourinho after he was
appointed Mauricio Pochettino’s managerial replacement at Spurs.
It had been suggested in some quarters that Tottenham had poached the young pair, a claim Lopez denies.
He enjoys a close relationship with Mourinho and insists he held
conversations with the Portuguese, Daniel Levy and Sacramento and Santos
themselves about the prospect of them leaving at some point for a
different challenge.
“Jose, who is also a friend of mine, never stole two guys from us, never,” Lopez said, as quoted by the Daily Mail.
“I had to read all sorts of crap about that. The two guys that went
(Nuno Santos and Joao Sacramento) came to us in the summer telling us –
and this was way before Jose signed at Tottenham. They told us that they
were maybe looking for the opportunities and if the opportunities came
along, if we would allow them to go.
“We said, both Luis and myself, ‘yes, at the end of the season’, OK.
And to be very transparent, we thought Jose would have a job at the end
of the season and so yes, they might join him and we talked openly with
Jose about it.
“[Jose] called me and said ‘look, what do you think? If we offer the
guys’. The CEO of Tottenham called me also and said ‘would you let them
go?’
“How would two people go who have a contract with me if I wasn’t OK with that?”
– Compiled by Baden Gillion
