Well here’s a New Year’s surprise. Kota Takai, the Japanese central defender who joined Tottenham Hotspur this summer but has yet to make a senior appearance, will have to wait a little longer for that distinction. The club announced today on social media that Takai is instead heading to Germany for the second half of the season, joining Bundesliga side Borussia Mönchengladbach on loan.
Now you can make all the jokes about “Kota Takai isn’t real, he’s a figment of our collective imaginations” all you want, but honestly I don’t hate this move. Takai joined Spurs from Kawasaki Frontale for £5m this summer which in and of itself suggests he’s one for the future. With Radu Dragusin now returned from injury, this move suggests a couple of things: a) Takai needs some time and football under his belt to make an impression, b) the club sees Takai as, at best, a 5th or 6th choice CB, and c) Radu Dragusin’s now probably not going anywhere until this summer, yappy pretend agent be damned.
It’s not all Takai’s fault that he hasn’t been used, of course. He was dealing with a nasty case of plantar fasciitis soon after he joined and then had a muscle injury later this fall. Those are two significant setbacks, and honestly going out on loan isn’t the worst move for him. And this is a really good loan! The fact that a mid-table German club wants to take a guy who hasn’t played a game outside of Japan yet suggests they think he could be a useful player. That’s good! And let’s not forget, a German loan has worked wonders for Luka Vuskovic. I like this move.
With Takai out on loan, that leaves a CB stable of Cuti Romero, Micky van de Ven, Kevin Danso, Dragusin, and Ben Davies as a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency defender. That seems okay to me. And since he’ll play in a top flight league that means we’ll hopefully have an opportunity to see him actually play football and come to some conclusions as to whether we think he has a future at Spurs or not.
Who knows, maybe by this time in 2027 he’ll have made his Spurs debut!