Tottenham announce De Zerbi staff additions and performance shake-up
Written by
Simon Austin
July 21, 2026
Head Coach Roberto De Zerbi has added two more assistants to his Tottenham staff, while a performance restructure is also starting to take shape at the club.
When De Zerbi arrived at Spurs on March 31st, he brought only two of his regular assistants with him, despite having worked with the same core group at both Brighton and Marseille.
These were Fitness Coach Marcattilio Marcattilii and Senior Professional Development Phase Coach Marcello Quinto. However, having secured the club’s Premier League status, he has now brought in two more staff he has worked with before.
These are Andrew Crofts, who leaves Brighton after seven years to become Tottenham Assistant Head Coach, and Agostino Tibaudi, who becomes Strength and Conditioning Coach after working with De Zerbi at his last four clubs.
Transition Coach Stuart Lewis, who had been on Tottenham’s coaching staff since 2015, has left to become First-Team Coach under Gary O’Neil at Ipswich Town.
Meanwhile, there have been two important appointments to Tottenham’s performance and medical department following an extensive internal review led by Performance Director Dan Lewindon.
Ali James has come in from Aston Villa, where he was Head Physio since November 2022, to become Head of Medical Services, while Tom Tombleson has arrived from Manchester City, where he was Head of Athletic Development, to take on the same role at Spurs.
Performance revamp
Lewindon’s review looked at why Tottenham’s season was so badly impacted by fitness issues, particularly ACL injuries.
James Maddison, Wilson Odobert and Xavi Simons all suffered long-term ACL damage, while Dejan Kulusevski missed the entire campaign recovering from knee surgery. Average player availability last season was around 77%, with squad members absent for a combined total of more than 2,000 days.
Tottenham want to push these numbers closer to 90% and under 1,000 days respectively.
Lewindon, who joined Tottenham in October 2025 from the City Football Group, has made a number of key recommendations to the club.
These include more individually-tailored medical support built around bespoke player profiles covering strength, fatigue and psychological factors; greater flexibility for injured players to rehab away from the training ground, including with external practitioners; and a new integrated structure in which De Zerbi’s staff, the medical department and the player jointly sign off on rehab timelines.
There is also an acknowledgement internally that changing Head Coach three times in under 12 months contributed to the club’s injury problems. The appointments of James and Tombleson follow the review.
Before Villa, James spent almost a decade at rugby union side Wasps (December 2012 to October 2022), rising to Head of Physiotherapy/Medical Services. He has also worked as an RFU Immediate Care in Sport Tutor and Consultant Physiotherapist for the Rugby Football Union since 2014, treating the England Senior XV during matches and training camps, and held earlier roles at Premier Physical Healthcare and Oxford University RFC.
Ali James: Spent a decade working for Wasps in rugby union
De Zerbi’s staff
Seven staff remain alongside De Zerbi’s from last season: Bruno Saltor (Assistant Coach), Andreas Georgson (Assistant Coach), Cameron Campbell (Individual Development Coach), Fabian Otte (Goalkeeping Coach) and Dean Brill (Assistant Goalkeeping Coach), who had all served under previous Head Coach Thomas Frank, and Marcattilii and Quinto, who joined with the Italian.
Added to the mix are Crofts and Tibaudi. Crofts worked under De Zerbi at Brighton and is a former Wales international with more than 450 Football League appearances for Gillingham, Wrexham, Charlton and Brighton.
He returned to Brighton in July 2019 in an innovative over-aged player-coach role with the Under-23s – the first player in the Premier League to fill such a position. Then Technical Director Dan Ashworth called it “an innovative step” and Crofts made 20 appearances for the U23s before moving fully into coaching.
He became U21 Head Coach in 2021 and was briefly Interim Head Coach following Graham Potter’s departure in 2022. He stayed on the staff once De Zerbi arrived and was most recently one of Fabian Hurzeler’s assistants at the Amex, alongside his work with Craig Bellamy’s Wales set-up.
Tibaudi has worked with De Zerbi since Sassuolo in 2018, taking in spells at Shakhtar Donetsk, Brighton and Marseille.
Lewis to Ipswich
Lewis had been on Tottenham’s coaching staff since 2015. The boyhood Spurs fan progressed through the Academy as a player and returned as a part-time coach in 2015.
He led the U16s, U17s and then the U18s, leading them to Premier League Cup success in 2022/23. Last summer he was promoted to First Team Transition Coach, responsible for aiding the development and integration of young players into the senior set-up.
He has joined Ipswich Town as First-Team Coach under O’Neil.
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