FOOTBALL: Tottenham fitness coach Gian Piero Ventrone dies at 61 after battle with leukemia

For­mer Tot­ten­ham fit­ness coach Gian Piero Ben­torone has died at the age of 61 after a brief bat­tle with acute leukemia.

The pop­u­lar Ital­ian, who arrived at Spurs along­side Anto­nio Con­te in Novem­ber 2021, is a trust­ed ally of the for­mer Chelsea boss.

Ven­trone had a rep­u­ta­tion for work­ing very well with his play­ers and for being able to build an incred­i­bly close rela­tion­ship with them.

“Tot­ten­ham are shocked to announce the pass­ing of fit­ness coach Gian Piero Bentorone.

“A 61-year-old who joined the club in Novem­ber 2021 as Anto­nio Con­te’s back­room staff after work­ing at Juven­tus, Cata­nia, JS Sun­ing, GZ Ever­grande and AC Ajaccio.

“Jean Piero was very demand­ing off the pitch and quick­ly became a favorite with play­ers and staff.

“He will be missed at the club and our thoughts are with his fam­i­ly and friends at this very sad time.”

Dur­ing his time with Spurs, Ven­trone devel­oped a par­tic­u­lar­ly close rela­tion­ship with South Kore­an super­star Son Heung-min, hug­ging him after scor­ing a hat-trick against Leices­ter City last month.

After a touch­ing moment, Song said, “Yes, he’s a killer. He’s a killer, but I have a very, very good rela­tion­ship with Jean Piero.”

“Of course, my Eng­lish isn’t per­fect, so some­times I bring my cell phone and trans­late from Ital­ian to English.

It has a “big mean­ing”. I am very grate­ful to him for giv­ing me var­i­ous advices about life rather than soccer. ”

“He was always there to help me, hold me when I was hav­ing a hard time, always stand by me and the whole team when it mattered.

“Today, before leav­ing the prac­tice field and before leav­ing the hotel, we had a pleas­ant con­ver­sa­tion for a few min­utes, which made me feel very com­fort­able and grateful.

Tot­ten­ham have improved notice­ably since the arrival of the expe­ri­enced Ven­trone, and it should have been obvi­ous for Conte.

The 53-year-old first met ‘El Mari­no’ as he was called in his native coun­try when he played for Juven­tus under Mar­cel­lo Lip­pi in the 1990s.

Ven­trone helped Juven­tus win the Cham­pi­ons League in 1996, and Con­te and his side were in incred­i­ble form.

Besides Lip­pi and Con­te, Ven­trone also worked with Ital­ian leg­end Fabio Can­navaro dur­ing his time as man­ag­er of Guangzhou Hengki.

Espe­cial­ly in this year’s Spurs pre-sea­son, Ven­trone con­duct­ed a rig­or­ous test dur­ing the trip to South Korea, giv­ing the play­ers great power.

Har­ry Kane vom­it­ed dur­ing the ses­sion and Son col­lapsed on the floor from exhaus­tion, but both knew the gru­el­ing train­ing would pay off for them in the long run.

Con­te’s pre-match press con­fer­ence was under­stand­ably can­celed fol­low­ing the news.