Harry Kane is not his biggest problem: Dinamo’s coach sentenced to prison!

Troubled Croatian club Dinamo Zagreb was already facing a difficult task after losing the first leg and now it’s looking impossible. But being eliminated from European competition is probably the least of their worries as their former director Zdravko Mamic and his brother Zoran face prison sentences for fraud.

On the week that Tottenham travel to Croatia to face Zagreb in the Europa League, the club are in crisis with their manager also having quit while himself facing a four-and-a-half-year sentence for fraud. But is is ex-director Mamic who is making all the headlines ahead of the game, having fled across the border to Bosnia to hold a press conference at a five-star hotel before giving himself up to police.

Zdravko Mamic has effectively been the owner of the Croatia’s most decorated club. For more than 20 years he built a reputation of a shrewd businessman with a nose for transfer dealings. Under his stewardship, the club won many titles but has also become extremely productive in terms of developing young talent before selling them for a huge profit. Dejan Lovren, Luka Modric, Mario Mandzukic, Dani Olmo, Marcelo Brozovic, Mateo Kovacic and many others were sold by Mamic and Dinamo over the past 15 years and it’s transfers of Modric and Lovren that produced the most controversy.

The Mamic brothers were sentenced on Monday for snatching around $20 million from player transfers out of the club. One example of the fraud for which the four men were convicted details an incident in 2011, in which they falsely stated that a player was entitled to half of the transfer fee that the club received for his move away from the club. It is then alleged that the money was paid from the club's account to the player's account, only for the player to then forward the money to another of the defendants.

Luka Modric at a hearing in 2017. The Mamic brothers are pictured sitting in the background (©AFP)

But now Zoran Mamic resigned from his post as head coach and Zdravko Mamic remains at large in the neighbouring country of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On Tuesday he faced the media and made a sensational claim that it was the two star players who were a part of the embezzlement. While facing the cameras, he made the incredible claim that Lovren and Modric - both former Premier League and Champions League regulars with Liverpool and Spurs among others - still have some of the club's money. He claims that the pair was involved in the scheme.

"I took the money from Dinamo through Modric and Lovren. One of them, specifically Modric, still has several million euros in that account, which he shared with me on the basis of a private contract. Modric withdrew that money and paid it to my family members. If the Mamic brothers have to return the money, then Dejan Lovren and Luka Modric must also return the money. I do not rejoice, I wish them the same as my daughters, I am happy that they are out of it, but they are accomplices, the money is with them."

While this week should have been spent building up to their Europa League clash with Jose Mourinho's Spurs, attention has been focused on off-field matters. Speaking after the verdict, Zoran Mamic explained his decision to resign as coach.

"Although I don't feel guilty, I resign as I said before I would do if the sentence was confirmed. I wish all the good luck to the club."

As if this season couldn’t have been any weirder…