Don’t you just love the transfer window? Rumors abound. Possibilities are endless. Dreams are crushed. And sometimes, you get all three within the space of a few hours.
Enter Piero Hincapie.
The Ecuadorian center back is a player Spurs have kicked the tires on for some time. He’s an exciting, ball-playing defender who loves to get forward, can deputize at left back, and would give Tottenham Hotspur a huge amount of flexibility in their squad as to potential matchday structures. He would also offset hugely the risk of losing Cristian Romero and/or Micky van de Ven to injury. The guy is a talent.
That’s probably why Spurs tested the waters a couple of weeks ago, according to Fabrizio Romano. The approach was apparently rebuffed, with the club not offering enough to tempt Bayer Leverkusen, but that hasn’t prevented the smoke around Hincapie from continuing to intensify. Fab then provided an update in the last couple of hours, saying Spurs have upped their offer, willing to negotiate a loan with option-to-buy deal in which Hincapie’s release clause is paid in full - just in a year’s time. He also indicated Spurs were discussing personal terms with Hincapie.
That all sounds… encouraging?
Enter David Orstein:
Alasdair Gold also indicated Hincapie isn’t an option for Spurs, and I am just disappointed all over again. It’s not often Fab and a couple of the more… trustworthy reporters disagree, and on this occasion I am inclined to trust both Gold and Ornstein. There’s a couple of reasons Fab may have got this one wrong:
Fab often gets info from agents. Hincapie’s agents are clearly keen on pushing a move, but maybe not to Spurs, in which case… pump up the publicity around Spurs’ interest to try drive other clubs to enter the race
Fab got info that said a London (or even North London) club was interested, and assumed based on Spurs’ previous attempt that this updated offer was coming from N17
Nobody knows what they are talking about
In all honesty, it kind of feels like option 1, and that is just an absolute killer after the way this transfer window has played out. The club has been used as a stalking horse on many an occasion in the past, but this window has felt a bit different, with Spurs struggling to fill clear gaps without their efforts dissolving into a mess of aggregator tweets.
This specific instance, though, very much feels like the transfer window in a nutshell:
Club targets player
Selling club rebuffs approach
Club returns with improved approach
Player isn’t especially interested but wants out, so agents leak information
Different outlets now have different sides of the story
Other clubs are interested
…
Profit?
I’m not quite sure how we get to that last step. Neither is Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, apparently. The club has struggled to sign players this transfer window. In fairness, they have set their sights high, but there are only so many times you can swing and miss before you are struck out. I still have a level of hope that Spurs will address some of the glaring holes in the squad before the end of the transfer window, and over the last few hours that hope started to steadily build and surge once more… before being dashed on the rocks below.
This is exhausting. Bring on deadline day, I say.