Tottenham remain in talks with Bayern Munich over a deal to sign Mathys Tel, says the German club's sporting director Max Eberl.
Tel was signed on loan by Spurs in January with a reported €50million (£42.5million) option to buy the 20-year-old this summer. While the Frenchman fitted in well at the club amid a difficult season, the fact that he contributed three goals and one assist in 20 appearances made that price tag seem a little steep.
Tel had a trophy-laden season though having won the Europa League with Spurs but also playing in the first half of the campaign for Bayern who went on to win the Bundesliga.
Tottenham were expected to discuss a lower fee or the possibility of a further loan with an option to buy at the end of it for the attacker, who is currently playing for France at the European U21 Championships after being left out of Vincent Kompany's Club World Cup squad. Now Eberl has confirmed that discussions between the two clubs are taking place over the youngster's future.
"Mathys was at Tottenham for six months. He wanted to play in the U21 European championship with France, and we allowed him to," he is quoted by Sport Witness as saying to Abendzeitung München. "We’re talking to Tottenham, that’s no secret. We’ll see how that pans out."
Ange Postecoglou had been asked about Tel's future ahead of the final game of the season against Brighton last month but admitted that with his situation at the time he was none the wiser.
"I guess they're the kind of discussions that we start to need to have. But again, without myself gatecrashing meetings, I need to be invited to them, but we'll assess all those things," he said.
"Matty's done really well for us. We put him in a real difficult position in that as a young player who hadn't played a lot, probably wasn't fit enough, we just threw him straight in but he's handled it really well.
"I think he's been a real important contributor for us and he'll definitely play tomorrow at some point whether he starts or come off the bench. I'm sure those decisions we'll kind of look into post-season."