Steve Hitchen sent the Tottenham staff a heartfelt email on Wednesday explaining his decision to resign as the club's technical performance director, football.london understands.
The 45-year-old asked Spurs chairman Daniel Levy on Tuesday to release him from his contract after five years at the club - 10 years in total following a previous spell as a scout.
That request was granted and Hitchen has now begun a period of gardening leave, with both Everton and Newcastle United believed to be showing interest in bringing him in to head up their new projects.
Staff within Spurs have told football.london that Hitchen sent a heartfelt email to them all on Wednesday explaining the reasoning behind his resignation to seek new challenges after the last five years.
He is understood to have praised those staff behind the scenes who have kept the club going through the highs and lows and spoken of his honour at working with some of the world's best managers during the past half a decade.
Hitchen also reserved thanks for Levy for giving him the chance to work for Tottenham and then the chairman's understanding with his decision to seek new opportunities.
Hitchen is understood to have been considering his future at Spurs since last summer, when an unexpected move was made to bring Fabio Paratici in as the club's new managing director of football.
While Hitchen and Paratici are believed to be friends, the Italian's arrival naturally changed the role of the former, who had grown from chief scout to be seen as the club's director of football in all but name, before officially being given his technical performance director title in 2020.
Hitchen took more of a backseat after Paratici's arrival, focusing on helping the former Juventus man appraise and overhaul various departments within the football side of the club, including scouting, analysis and sports science.
He is understood to have had little involvement in both of the past two transfer windows and is believed to have taken two weeks off this month in order to make a final decision over his future, which resulted in the meeting with Levy when he returned.
Hitchen had become a popular figure at Hotspur Way with players and staff over the years and was a close ally to each of the managers or head coaches he has worked with, drawing public and private praise from them for his work behind the scenes.
Antonio Conte is believed to have quickly grown close to him and that is expected to be reflected in his press conference on Friday if asked about his departure.
While working as the de facto head of recruitment, Hitchen, who had helped broker deals for the likes of Luka Modric and Luis Suarez during his previous spells at Spurs and Liverpool, was somewhat caught between a rock and a hard place during his most recent five-year period at the club.
His role was to try to provide the managers with the players that they wanted, while also negotiating deals for the scouting department's top targets and all of them then had to get the green light from both the manager and finally Levy.
Mauricio Pochettino is not believed to be the biggest fan of the sporting director/head coach structure but he and Hitchen grew very close after the latter's arrival in 2017, following previous head of recruitment Paul Mitchell's departure the previous year.
Hitchen was tasked with bringing in the players Pochettino wanted and the ones Levy would sign off on.
That mean that he would carry the can publicly for record signings Tanguy Ndombele and Giovani Lo Celso, both pushed for by Pochettino, in particular the Frenchman who the Argentine tried to get to PSG this summer. Lo Celso is understood to have been Pochettino's choice after a move for Bruno Fernandes was not pushed through.
The summer of 2020 brought similar players signed for a manager, with Jose Mourinho on record as being delighted with the arrival of his targets Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, Sergio Reguilon and Matt Doherty, while Hitchen was also involved with Levy in bringing Gareth Bale back to the club on loan.
In Mourinho's earlier first January window, Hitchen had long kept an eye on and pushed for the signing of the Dutchman Steven Bergwijn, who had an immediate impact with a dramatic debut goal against Manchester City.
Injury has prevented the young midfielder from fully making his mark at the club since but he has shown what he can do in some big moments so far and Conte is a fan of the former PSV Eindhoven attacker, as was Nuno Espirito Santo and eventually Mourinho.
"Compliments to the club for getting him," said Mourinho on Bergwijn later that season. "He wasn't my first choice, I'm always very honest about that, but it turned out to be a great decision.
"Steven is a player with a bright future ahead of him. He can handle the right and left. We are very happy with him: not only because of his age but also because of his professional attitude. The way he trains, the way he lives … he’s a boy who can only get better."
Spurs' other signing that January was Gedson Fernandes, a loan move that is believed to have been pushed by Mourinho and the player's agent Jorge Mendes.
In all of his transfer windows Hitchen would also negotiate deals to advanced stages for heavily scouted players which would then not be taken over the finish line for one reason or another, with targets such as Fernandes, Jack Grealish and Paulo Dybala all examples of such.
There were mistakes made by Hitchen during his time at Tottenham.
He is also believed to have pushed with Pochettino for the record signing of Ndombele, his own top choice in that summer of 2019, believing that the manager could help the gifted Frenchman develop on and off the pitch despite questions marks surrounding his application and consistency in the past.
Serge Aurier is another player that Hitchen is believed in particular to have pushed the merits of.
The Ivory Coast international, signed for £23m from PSG in 2017, never really found a level of consistency at Spurs and the club had to agree to release him from his contract a year early last summer just to get him off the books.
There have been successes, with Lucas Moura another PSG player Hitchen advocated the signing of. The Brazilian has since had some memorable moments for Spurs in his four years at the club, not least the hat-trick against Ajax that took them to the Champions League final.
After Lucas had scored a couple of goals at Manchester United in 2018, Pochettino said: "I want to say to our chief scout Steve Hitchen and all the people that worked with him, because they advised to sign him.
"When the people sometimes criticise because always it is tough now, I think I need to say well done, because today's performance from Lucas Moura, for the people that advised and feel responsible too, they need to be praised too.
""That is why I want to congratulate them. There are always people who are working behind and it was a fantastic job because today I think Lucas deserves a lot of credit."
Hitchen's final real front and centre role at Tottenham was taking charge of the first half of their managerial search last summer.
He was tasked with drawing up a shortlist to find the next Pochettino, with a very public brief from Levy for someone to bring "free-flowing, attacking and entertaining" football.
Hitchen is understood to have spoken to a range of suitable candidates including the now Germany boss Hansi Flick, Ajax's Erik ten Haag, Brighton Graham Potter and he even discussed a dramatic return with his close friend and the blueprint for the search - Pochettino.
Some of the candidates ended up turning down the opportunity to join Spurs and others asked are believed to have wanted more time to make a decision.
With the long time being taken over trying to secure the right man for the role, Levy changed tact, appointing Paratici and the Italian went in a very different direction with his desired profile for the head coach, eventually settling on Nuno Espirito Santo.
Outside of the club, the perception of Hitchen among the Tottenham fanbase was affected following his first appearance in the Amazon All or Nothing documentary series about Jose Mourinho's first season at the club.
In the fifth episode of the series, reflecting most people within football's thoughts about the winter transfer window, Hitchen was shown saying: "The January window is the worst window. It's a window of opportunity. It's a window of panic. It's never a window to plan. I hate it."
He added: "I work on the metrics of what Jose gives us for what a Jose player is in each position, working on the parameters of finance that the club gives to us.
"Tottenham is in a very fortunate position now where the profile of the club has increased so much and it's nice to know that the players you can attract now is miles away from where they were five years ago.
"The club has been in a position for probably 12 months - taking away the Champions League - where we known we've had to rebuild the team. We just feel this is a time for some players to move on and to bring some new blood in."
Unfortunately for Hitchen, those three words "I hate it" became the source of a social media meme with his face and that caption underneath.
Those fans upset at the club's transfer activity claimed that he was a head of recruitment who hated recruitment, when in context it was a take on the difficulties of that short winter window which is one few clubs choose to operate within unless desperate.
Hitchen's time at Tottenham, longer than that of his many predecessors, will come to an end when his gardening leave does and the fact that Everton and Newcastle are interested in him heading up their recruitment hints at the standing the former Liverpool scout has among those in the game.
His departure means that much of the structure in place behind the scenes during the years of Pochettino is now gone, with a broom also sweeping across the squad that existed under the Argentine.
The years ahead will determine whether Levy's new Italian era at Tottenham can take the club to new heights or hit the ceiling others have found before.
