Well, at least it appears Spurs are TRYING to sign a player. With left back a significant need and a gaping hole in the squad, over the weekend the Athletic reported that Tottenham Hotspur are in the market for a backup to the currently-injured Destiny Udogie. The report states that Spurs have had an £8m bid rejected by Santos for 19-year-old Brazilian left back Souza.
Souza is a Santos youth product and just broke through into the first team last season, and he’s a promising, if unproven player. The Athletic and other outlets state that Santos has a release clause of £100m for non-Brazilian clubs (£60m for Brazilian clubs), the fact of which was reported uncritically and without context and which made a lot of online Spurs fans very very mad at the idea Spurs were trying to bid £8m for a “£100m valued player.” The truth is a lot sillier than that — it’s very, very common for clubs in South America to put a prohibitively expensive release clause in the contracts of their promising young players to prevent clubs from the region from swooping in for them. So Souza’s VALUE is not £100m — the Athletic say that Santos is holding out for £15m which is still a lot for a 19-year-old playing in his second season of Brazilian-league football — but it’s still an underbid by Spurs which was rejected.
Is Souza any good? Brother, I have no clue, I don’t watch the Brazilian league. His Green Bars™ look pretty good but with the extremely strong caveat that this represents minutes in the Brazilian first division. He’s also a Brazil U17 international which is nothing to sneeze at. Maybe he’s good! More likely he has the POTENTIAL to be good. But I’d have a difficult time believing Spurs would be bidding £8m for a player they think could instantly compete at the Premier League level, especially when the first choice left back is currently injured.
But what do I know? I just know this is a bid that happened, was rejected, and now Spurs need to figure out if they’re going to continue to pursue this guy. If so, I’d suggest Johan Lange get on the Souza Phone (musical joke!) and figure it out. Time’s a-wasting, and we sure do need a left back.