It’s barely spring, but already transfer news has started to leak and rumors have started to build ahead of the summer window; and Tottenham Hotspur are not immune to such conjecture. The target in this case? Spurs goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario, who is reportedly of interest to Serie A club Inter Milan:
Gianluca Di Marzio is typically pretty clued up when it comes to Italian football, and his report states that Inter’s sporting director Piero Ausilio was in London over the last couple of days to assess Vicario, as well as Aston Villa’s Emiliano Martinez, with Inter apparently looking for a replacement for keeper Yann Sommer this summer.
A similar report, this time from Matt Barlow at the Daily Mail, echoed Di Marzio’s piece, but took things a little further: Barlow declared Ausilio actually met with Vicario’s agent, and that Inter are hopeful a deal can be done for somewhere in the region of £17 million.
All things considered, a return to Italy this summer probably makes sense for both Vicario and Spurs. It’s been a challenging season for the Italian keeper, as his weaknesses have been brought to the fore, especially under Spurs’ previous head coach Thomas Frank. Vicario has always struggled somewhat with the ball at his feet, but that’s been exposed even more this campaign, with his usual strength of shot-stopping also becoming less of a reliable feature and more of an inconsistent bonus. Vicario is now among the bottom of the league in goals prevented, save percentage, and errors leading to goal, in a season where Spurs really could have used him taking a step up.
Goalkeeper has therefore shifted from being one of those “kick the can down the road, deal with it if the right opportunity arises” positions to a “we should deal with this sooner rather than later” situation. If Spurs can recoup what they paid for Vicario and invest it in a new keeper that is more comfortable on the ball as well as with the Premier League’s set piece physicality (and ideally without a drop-off in shot stopping), they should do it. Vicario will likely be glad as well to return to a top club in Italy; he’s still an excellent keeper on his day, with the ability to pull off the remarkable, but he’s never really looked comfortable in the English game.