Journalist Fabrizio Romano has revealed that Tottenham Hotspur are not in "fresh" talks with Julian Nagelsmann despite recent claims.
What's the latest on Nagelsmann and Tottenham?
It wasn't that long ago that Spurs appeared to brief the media that they had never held any conversations with the 35-year-old. Indeed, Sky Sports reported that Spurs would not be hiring the former Bayern Munich manager.
However, in a fresh update in The Times, it was claimed over the weekend that Nagelsmann was once again on the Premier League club's radar.
Despite this major new update, Romano has now stated that "nothing is advanced" and there isn't anything new going on with the manager unprepared to commit as he wants a sporting director to come in alongside him.
While speaking about it all on his YouTube channel, the journalist explained (0:56): "From what I understand, there are no fresh conversations between Tottenham and Julian Nagelsmann. So at the moment, nothing concrete or nothing advanced.
"To tell you the truth, Julian Nagelsmann was open to speaking to Tottenham regarding the job. It was until one week ago 10 days ago, two weeks ago. So Nagelsmann was open to that.
"But then what happened is that he wanted a director of football to be together with him on the daily job, to support his ideas on players and also on the day-by-day at Tottenham.
"And this is why, then at the end, the talks were stopped. So Tottenham decided not to proceed with that because they decided to go with a different kind of idea – to appoint a new director and then to decide on the manager, not to decide with the manager on the director."
Will Spurs hire a manager or a sporting director first?
And so, by the sounds of it, Nagelsmann wanted to have some say in who would come in and work alongside him as the sporting director after being hired.
But with Spurs now deciding they will first hire a new director and then work with that individual to decide on their next head coach, it seems a move for the German is currently off the cards.
All this suggests the focus right now then for Daniel Levy is to hire that executive as soon as possible.
And he can't delay for too long, because the Premier League season is nearly finished and if Tottenham slow down the process any further, this could impact any pre-season preparations for the next manager to arrive as they might not end up getting to work until July, or even later at this rate.
