Premier League winner Yaya Toure is to join Tottenham Hotspur as a coach in the club’s youth academy, with former Spurs striker Jermain Defoe set to follow.
The pair will form part of a revamped setup under manager , who took charge at the end of last year following the sacking of Nuno Espirito Santo and has significantly improved the team’s performances and results.
Spurs qualified for the UEFA on the final day of last season after surpassing local rivals , and have been active in the transfer market this summer, signing Richarlison from , Yves Bissouma from Brighton, Djed Spence from Middlesbrough, Ivan Perisic from Inter and Clement Lenglet on loan from Barcelona.
Now the club is trying to ensure it produces high quality players from its own academy, and is making significant structural changes in order to do so.
Former Manchester City and Anderlecht assistant manager Simon Davies has been given the role of head of methodology in the Spurs system, and both Toure and Davies are set to form part of his team moving forward.
‘I have started to realise how good it is to be a coach,’ Toure told earlier this year. ‘But sitting in an office the whole time – that’s not me. I want to be out on the grass, interacting with other people, exchanging ideas.’
Since his last playing spell with Qingdao Huanghai of China ended in 2020, 39-year-old Toure has served as assistant manager for both Olimpik Donetsk in Ukraine and Akhmat Grozny in Russia, as well as working with the likes of Queens Park Rangers and Blackburn Rovers on a temporary basis designed to help him build up experience as a coach.
Defoe, meanwhile, retired from football earlier this year after a short return to Sunderland, and previously spent time as a player-coach of Glasgow Rangers in the period between Steven Gerrard’s departure and Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s hiring.
Toure won three Premier League titles in an eight-year spell with Manchester City, scoring 20 league goals from midfield in the 2013/14 season, and also won the UEFA Champions League in his time with Barcelona.
Defoe scored 143 goals in 362 games in all competitions across two spells with Spurs, leaving for the final time in 2014.
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