Tottenham Hotspur chief Fabio Paratici could be lining up one of the bargains of 2022 this January…
What’s the word?
According to Spanish newspaper Mundo Deportivo (via Sport Witness), Spurs are one of the teams monitoring Ousmane Dembele’s contractual situation at Barcelona as he will soon enter the final six months of his current £210k-per-week contract.
The French winger is free to speak to foreign teams, including the north London outfit, from January, where a pre-contract agreement can be made ahead of the summer.
Those at the Nou Camp are said to be fed up by the time it is taking to agree to a new deal, so a deadline has been set, whilst it’s thought that his agent would prefer him to leave the LaLiga giants.
Valued at a whopping £45m by Transfermarkt, this could be quite the steal from Paratici and co.
Bargain swoop
It was only four years ago that the 23-year-old joined Barcelona in a mega £133.5m deal from Borussia Dortmund and whilst it’s safe to say that his time in Spain has hardly gone to plan, he is still an undoubted talent.
Injuries have somewhat hampered his chances at the Catalan outfit, though from 125 appearances, he has still directly contributed towards 55 goals, as per Transfermarkt. That’s a goal or assist every 130 minutes, which is a very respectable rate of return.
He is, after all, a player that even Lionel Messi is a huge fan of.
“On the pitch, [Dembele] is a phenomenon and it depends on him [how good he becomes],” the ex-Barca superstar told Marca (via FourFourTwo) back in 2018. “He has all the opportunity in the world to do what he wants. He can be one of the best.”
Elsewhere, ex-president Josep Maria Bartomeu believes he’s better than some of Europe’s biggest stars.
“With that money, we went for players like Dembele and [Philippe] Coutinho. Dembele is better than Neymar. He’s at Barca and he is better,” he once claimed to Sport.
On the above evidence, Dembele would be an absolute bargain to secure next month. When one of the world’s greats speaks of a player in that manner and you can sign him for nothing in terms of a transfer fee, then you’d be foolish to not try.
Despite his injuries and lack of game time on the pitch, it’s clear that the France international can still deliver whenever he is involved. That should be enough to convince manager Antonio Conte into pushing for his signing.
Paratici could land quite the raid with a move for the £45m-rated star.
AND in other news, Conte dealt fresh Spurs injury blow this week….
from FootballFanCast.com https://ift.tt/32gvsV6
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