Cartilage Free Captain

It’s been a painful game of chicken, but it appears things are on the threshold of coming together in the Emerson Royal to AC Milan transfer saga™. A number of reports coming from Italy, including from relatively trustworthy sources Gianluca DiMarzio and Fabrizio Romano:

We’re a little late to the party on this one, but this process has been exhausting, and it’s always a fine balance between keeping the commentariat up to date with unread articles and overwhelming you with nothing pieces. In short, things are looking more and more like they are coming towards a positive resolution, with the Brazilian right back headed towards Serie A.

I mentioned a painful game of chicken; well, not for Tottenham Hotspur.

The club have played their cards admirably, making some small initial concessions before holding firm on a number they felt was reasonable and affordable for a guy who is still in the prime of his career and a damn solid fullback. AC Milan tried to totally lowball Spurs initially, before things went quiet; and it was the Italian club who broke, inching up towards Spurs’ €20 million asking price.

It is possible external factors forced Milan’s hand, with reports out of Brazil indicating interest in Royal out of Turkey, with Galatasaray apparently willing to meet Spurs’ price. There could have been truth to those rumors, or they could also have been largely fiction, generated by either Spurs or Royal’s agent to try push things along; either way, it’s brought Milan back to the negotiating table, with reports claiming a €15 million plus escalators offer was tabled.

That’s a far cry from €10 million a couple of weeks back. I’d say we’re edging closer to the endgame now.

Tottenham Hotspur play their first preseason match of their Asian tour on Saturday morning against Vissel Kobe. Ahead of that match, today Spurs participated in an open training session at the National Stadium of Japan in front of a crowd of local fans. And afterwards, head coach Ange Postecoglou gave a press conference where he discussed Spurs’ preparations for this friendly, the ongoing transfer window, and his hopes for Spurs in this upcoming Premier League season.

Postecoglou first gave an update on who might feature against Vissel Kobe tomorrow, saying the only players who will definitely not feature are Destiny Udogie and Richarlison, whom both traveled with the team but are still recovering from injury. But Ben Davies is back, and will likely see at least a little bit of action on Saturday.

“Yeah the guys who kind of participated in the games so far [are available], plus Ben Davies has trained this week. So out of the travelling party I think it’s just Richy and Destiny who aren’t quite ready to play but everyone else is fit.”

Alasdair Gold, who is in Japan covering the tour for Football.London, expanded on Ange’s comments a bit through observations of the open training sessions, and noted that in addition to Udogie and Richarlison, Timo Werner and Alfie Whiteman also did not participate. Whiteman was a notable absence in Spurs’ previous friendly against QPR, with U23 keeper Luca Gunter getting an extended spell of play in the second half of that match.

Talk then pivoted to the transfer window. Yesterday, the news was about Tottenham’s imminent confirmation of 18-year-old Korean winger Yang Min-Hyuk. Postecoglou was asked about Yang’s addition, and while he didn’t give much away he did emphasize that Spurs are not limiting themselves to the European market as they continue to search for new players to improve the squad.

“Yeah, again I’m well aware of the quality of the K League. When I was at Celtic we were looking to bring over at least a couple of Korean players at the time and I think they’ve brought a couple over. Again they‘ve made a fantastic impact in Europe, a lot of Korean players, none bigger and none better than our own [Son Heung-Min]. He’s just an outstanding player and an outstanding person. He’s the captain of our club and he’s just an outstanding individual, we’re super happy to have him at our football club. So yes, we’ll be looking far and wide for players and as you rightly said, it is difficult for me to discuss.”

Postecoglou has a history with Japanese football, having managed Yokohama F. Marinos from 2018-2021, and bringing in a number of Japanese footballers into his Celtic teams before assuming the Spurs job. So does this mean Spurs are looking to raid the J-League for talent as well?

“Good try! We’re constantly looking. Everyone knows me. I spent close to four years here in Japan. I loved my time here and I really think the J League is a competition that ranks with, apart from maybe the big five or six leagues in Europe, I believe it ranks equal in quality with other leagues.

“I really believe that Japan is producing some world class players, who are already making their mark on the Premier League. We seen Mitoma go to Brighton and the Premier League and do fantastically well. I took three or four, maybe more, players to Celtic and they’re all making an impact. We’re constantly looking everywhere. I guess my experience here showed me that you can find quality footballers and footballers who will fit into the style we want to play from anywhere and we’re constantly looking. So yes my answer is not yes and not no.”

One of the through-lines this summer has been the lack of concrete information about Tottenham’s transfer moves. It was noted that some fans are getting edgy about incoming (and outgoing) players with the start of the new season looming. But Ange said that the club has had a plan for transfers from the beginning, and while situations change the overall plan does, and has, not.

“As you say, at this time of year it’s pretty hard for supporters because they don’t have all the information and it’s fair to say there’s plenty of misinformation out there. We’re working hard to bring players in and it’s a process that you sometimes have to be patient with. But in terms of what we set out to do, that’s still the plan and you have to stay disciplined with that.

“Sometimes the timings don’t work out and it doesn’t happen as quickly as you want and you don’t get them (players) in at the right time but I think it’s really important you stay disciplined and not run off and chase other things. So, what we started with at the start of summer are still there, and I wouldn’t want to put timelines on it. A lot of that is out of our control and we just need to be patient. From where I sit at the moment we’re still in that phase where what we identified is still what we’re after.”

Kia ora.

Last Hoddle for the week - and for me for a while, with Fitzie back next week.

Honestly, I don’t know how he does it - racking my brain for a different topic each day, trying to keep the masses entertained (insert Gladiator gif here). I think of it as the writing equivalent of MC’ing an event; it’s a very specific skillset, pulling a thought out of mid-air, and having the ability to utilize that to grab peoples’ attention.

In terms of that, it’s always good to have some sort of connection to the cultural zeitgest, which... I’m more man who yells at cloud than man of the people. I’d never make it as a politician; I’m not sure I even qualify as a writer!

So this is kind of a stream-of-consciousness Hoddle, getting meta, so to speak - because I’ve run out of things to talk about! You probably know far more about me now than you ever wanted to, so sorry about that - but isn’t that kind of the cool thing about Cartilage Free Captain? A community of people, connecting over a particular passion? Even one that absolutely destroys you as much as Spurs?

I guess that’s been my goal this week, and maybe the goal of the Hoddle in general: we all have a single point of connection - so let’s find some more!

All this to say: it’s been a pleasure chatting with you all this week. It took me back to the days when I was but one of the commentariat, dropping #takes into the comments (seriously, are you still even reading this?) on whether a hot dog is a sandwich, knife vs bat, and who’s the next THE. But it’ll be great to have Fitzie back - his chats are fantastic, and even if he has poor taste in football players (#sorrynotsorry) he does have great taste in music. We’re lucky to have him.

Mā te wā.

Matty’s track of the day: End of the Affair (Live), by Ben Howard

And now for your links:

A look at the remaining work needed for Spurs in the transfer window, from Football London

Dejan Kulusevski and Lucas Bergvall visit the Diary Room: check it out on the club site. There’s even some singing!

Kia ora.

Last Hoddle for the week - and for me for a while, with Fitzie back next week.

Honestly, I don’t know how he does it - racking my brain for a different topic each day, trying to keep the masses entertained (insert Gladiator gif here). I think of it as the writing equivalent of MC’ing an event; it’s a very specific skillset, pulling a thought out of mid-air, and having the ability to utilize that to grab peoples’ attention.

In terms of that, it’s always good to have some sort of connection to the cultural zeitgest, which... I’m more man who yells at cloud than man of the people. I’d never make it as a politician; I’m not sure I even qualify as a writer!

So this is kind of a stream-of-consciousness Hoddle, getting meta, so to speak - because I’ve run out of things to talk about! You probably know far more about me now than you ever wanted to, so sorry about that - but isn’t that kind of the cool thing about Cartilage Free Captain? A community of people, connecting over a particular passion? Even one that absolutely destroys you as much as Spurs?

I guess that’s been my goal this week, and maybe the goal of the Hoddle in general: we all have a single point of connection - so let’s find some more!

All this to say: it’s been a pleasure chatting with you all this week. It took me back to the days when I was but one of the commentariat, dropping #takes into the comments (seriously, are you still even reading this?) on whether a hot dog is a sandwich, knife vs bat, and who’s the next THE. But it’ll be great to have Fitzie back - his chats are fantastic, and even if he has poor taste in football players (#sorrynotsorry) he does have great taste in music. We’re lucky to have him.

Mā te wā.

Matty’s track of the day: End of the Affair (Live), by Ben Howard

And now for your links:

A look at the remaining work needed for Spurs in the transfer window, from Football London

Dejan Kulusevski and Lucas Bergvall visit the Diary Room: check it out on the club site. There’s even some singing!

It’s a done deal, almost! According to both Fabrizio Romano and Alasdair Gold, Tottenham Hotspur was indeed the club working to bring in 18-year old South Korean winger Yang Min-Hyuk from Gangwon FC. The deal is now agreed apart from part of the medical, and he’ll join Spurs at the end of the K-League season in January 2025.

So this was originally couched as a “loan back” to Gangwon, but I’m not actually sure that’s the case. Instead I think it’s more like the Lucas Bergvall deal in that Yang will just stay on at his current club until the end of the K-League season in November, then join up with Spurs in January, 2025. No loan needed, which means Spurs don’t use up one of their decreasing, and valuable, loan spots for this window.

Writing in Football.London, Gold spoke to South Korean journalist Sungmo Lee about Yang and what he might bring to Tottenham.

“Yang Min-hyuk is the best young player in the K League right now, and most significantly, he’s still a high school student. His talent was so exceptional so his club Gangwon proposed the professional contract to a high school student which was the first ever case in K League’s history.

“He showed great performances in K League this season, winning the ‘young player of the month’ award three times in a row from April to June. He is a great dribbler but also possesses great finishing skills which makes Korean fans hope that he can become the next Son Heung-min, especially if he joins the same club with Son in Tottenham.”

—Sungmo Lee, via Football.London

Sounds pretty good to me! But I wouldn’t expect that Yang will make an instant impact at Spurs when he joins in January. He’s still just 18, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see him slot into the U23s to get adapted to life and football in England. I’d guess he’s at least a year or so away from showing up in a first team match or anything. But hey, I’ve been wrong before, so let’s hope I am and he starts kicking butt right away.

Yang will also have the advantage of having a fantastic mentor in Son Heung-Min when he arrives. Sonny’s spoken in the past about how difficult it is to adapt to a new culture when you first leave Korea, especially when you’re young. If there’s one thing we know about Son is that he’s an incredible teammate and friend, and I have no doubt he’ll bend over backwards to help Yang adapt.

There are reports that the transfer fee for Yang is just €4m, which depending on who you ask is either stupid low for a potentially generational Korean talent, or a rather high swing for a foreign player lottery ticket. I lean towards the former, but I’m also an optimist.

It’s a done deal, almost! According to both Fabrizio Romano and Alasdair Gold, Tottenham Hotspur was indeed the club working to bring in 18-year old South Korean winger Yang Min-Hyuk from Gangwon FC. The deal is now agreed apart from part of the medical, and he’ll join Spurs at the end of the K-League season in January 2025.

So this was originally couched as a “loan back” to Gangwon, but I’m not actually sure that’s the case. Instead I think it’s more like the Lucas Bergvall deal in that Yang will just stay on at his current club until the end of the K-League season in November, then join up with Spurs in January, 2025. No loan needed, which means Spurs don’t use up one of their decreasing, and valuable, loan spots for this window.

Writing in Football.London, Gold spoke to South Korean journalist Sungmo Lee about Yang and what he might bring to Tottenham.

“Yang Min-hyuk is the best young player in the K League right now, and most significantly, he’s still a high school student. His talent was so exceptional so his club Gangwon proposed the professional contract to a high school student which was the first ever case in K League’s history.

“He showed great performances in K League this season, winning the ‘young player of the month’ award three times in a row from April to June. He is a great dribbler but also possesses great finishing skills which makes Korean fans hope that he can become the next Son Heung-min, especially if he joins the same club with Son in Tottenham.”

—Sungmo Lee, via Football.London

Sounds pretty good to me! But I wouldn’t expect that Yang will make an instant impact at Spurs when he joins in January. He’s still just 18, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see him slot into the U23s to get adapted to life and football in England. I’d guess he’s at least a year or so away from showing up in a first team match or anything. But hey, I’ve been wrong before, so let’s hope I am and he starts kicking butt right away.

Yang will also have the advantage of having a fantastic mentor in Son Heung-Min when he arrives. Sonny’s spoken in the past about how difficult it is to adapt to a new culture when you first leave Korea, especially when you’re young. If there’s one thing we know about Son is that he’s an incredible teammate and friend, and I have no doubt he’ll bend over backwards to help Yang adapt.

There are reports that the transfer fee for Yang is just €4m, which depending on who you ask is either stupid low for a potentially generational Korean talent, or a rather high swing for a foreign player lottery ticket. I lean towards the former, but I’m also an optimist.

Earlier this summer, Tottenham Hotspur and left back Ryan Sessegnon amicably parted ways. It wasn’t exactly a surprise; Sessegnon’s career had been almost completely derailed by persistent injuries over the past two seasons to the point where he had barely played football for more than a year.

It was decided that he needed a fresh start somewhere new where he could hopefully get back to fitness and playing condition. To that end Spurs and Sess mutually terminated his contract and Ryan been training for the past few weeks at Crystal Palace.

But it doesn’t look like he’ll be playing for Palace after all. According to Fabrizio Romano, Sessegnon will re-sign with his former club Fulham, where he and his twin brother Steven came up as youth players.

There’s something romantic about going home, and that feels exactly like what Ryan’s doing here. Fulham is clearly a club where he feels comfortable, as he spent 11 years there as a schoolboy and professional there before moving to Spurs in 2019. He gets to stay in London as well, which along with Palace I’m sure was a big part of his decision-making process.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again here — I’m sad that things just didn’t work out for Sessegnon at Tottenham, because I like him a lot. But things just don’t work out sometimes, and Fulham feels like a place where he’ll, ironically, put his past behind him while heading back to the club of his youth. I wish him well.

Earlier this summer, Tottenham Hotspur and left back Ryan Sessegnon amicably parted ways. It wasn’t exactly a surprise; Sessegnon’s career had been almost completely derailed by persistent injuries over the past two seasons to the point where he had barely played football for more than a year.

It was decided that he needed a fresh start somewhere new where he could hopefully get back to fitness and playing condition. To that end Spurs and Sess mutually terminated his contract and Ryan been training for the past few weeks at Crystal Palace.

But it doesn’t look like he’ll be playing for Palace after all. According to Fabrizio Romano, Sessegnon will re-sign with his former club Fulham, where he and his twin brother Steven came up as youth players.

There’s something romantic about going home, and that feels exactly like what Ryan’s doing here. Fulham is clearly a club where he feels comfortable, as he spent 11 years there as a schoolboy and professional there before moving to Spurs in 2019. He gets to stay in London as well, which along with Palace I’m sure was a big part of his decision-making process.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again here — I’m sad that things just didn’t work out for Sessegnon at Tottenham, because I like him a lot. But things just don’t work out sometimes, and Fulham feels like a place where he’ll, ironically, put his past behind him while heading back to the club of his youth. I wish him well.

Preseason can be grueling; even more so when your preseason is in 90°F plus temperatures.

From a coaching perspective, it’s the time to build fitness and conditioning for the long season ahead, but also to give opportunities to players to prove themselves. From a club and commercial perspective, it’s a chance to grow the team’s profile around the world.

All these things exist in a delicate balance: matches in far-flung corners of the globe (not that Japan is that) are great from a marketing perspective, but is the volume of travel too much? How hard do you push your players so that they are peaking coming into the season proper? How do you balance ensuring your nailed-on starters are Premier League match-fit versus allowing your youth talent time to shine and possibly break through?

It’s likely this delicate balance that has resulted in the club scheduling an additional behind-closed-doors friendly later today (Thursday evening, Japan time) ahead of the first official friendly of the Asian tour on Saturday against Vissel Kobe, as reported by Alasdair Gold:

There’s not much info on the match, with neither a kick-off time nor opponent mentioned (though it’s likely to be a local club side); but the rationale is that with two official friendlies (plus another behind-closed-doors match against Cambridge United) already under the belt, it’s time for the senior players to start upping their minutes.

That doesn’t mean the youth players will be left out; there’s obviously a tight turnaround leading into the Vissel Kobe match, and it’s the same with the matches following, with the Kobe, K-League All Stars, and Bayern Munich friendlies all scheduled in the space of a week. There’s plenty of minutes to go around. My prediction instead is that we’ll likely see a number of the senior starters go 60 minutes against Vissel Kobe, supplemented with some youth teamers who will play a half each; with then a different set of senior players doing the same against the K-League All Stars side.

I’m all for more football; I just hope that the team don’t overdo it, with a litany of hamstring injuries last season and the sheer exhaustion we saw under Conte the year prior. I’m sure Ange knows what he’s doing.

Kia ora.

I’m a big TV fan. My wife and I watch a fair few shows between us, and one thing that’s become noticeable over the past 5-10 years is how much TV, and how it’s structured, has changed.

The advent of streaming services, better hardware quality, and improvements in CGI has resulted in big, movie-level budgets to deliver a “prestige-level” product; this increase in cost to film has also seen seasons grow shorter, with the desire to binge watch meaning less room for “filler” or “monster-of-the-week” (to use an X-Files term) episodes to pad out a 20+ episode season, with viewers often complaining about the insertion of such breaks from the main plot.

The really big change though has been the wait between seasons.

Gone are the days of surety surrounding the yearly September to May air window for network shows; instead, we sometimes see 2+ year waits as new seasons are prepared. The increased cost means studios are often reluctant to renew shows early without some quantification of show performance; there’s also increased time spent writing, the advent of film actors moving into TV (often meaning scheduling conflicts), and a longer post-production window to get shows looking sharp (as we’ve all come to expect).

This can actively harm shows as well, as long-running plot lines get forgotten, fans disconnect from the show, or people with busy lives start new shows and find they can’t really be bothered picking up another one again; Westworld was somewhat a victim of this (though it had other issues) with huge gaps between seasons.

I’ve honestly forgotten some of the shows on which I’m waiting; Severance Season 2 is a big one, airing early next year; the second season of Andor is another likely releasing around the same time. Stranger Things, Silo, For All Mankind, Fargo, The White Lotus... the list goes on. I guess you could say I’m impatient.

What about you? Do you prefer the longer wait for “higher quality” TV? Is there anything you’ve been waiting a long time to continue watching?

Matty’s track of the day: This Is Why (Live), by Paramore

And now for your links:

Ledley King & Ossie Ardiles have been hanging out in Japan with supporters

A K-League perspective on purported Spurs signing Yang Min-Hyuk’s rise to stardom

A fantastic video from The Extra Inch highlighting the problems with Spurs’ squad and how to potentially fix them (or not)