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Why Tottenham Hotspur Can't Afford To Sell Wilson Palacios

This summer has seen Wilson Palacios' named bandied about in transfer rumors with a move to Napoli the most common. It's no surprise that the quality midfielder who fell out of favor with Harry Redknapp would want to make a move somewhere he could play more regularly and with no new stadium and a need for reinforcements, Spurs would have no problem selling him if the sale could help finance the buy of a top player.

Selling Palacios would be enormously shortsighted though. So he could bring back a reported £12 million. That's basically nothing compared to the type of money Tottenham would be leaving on the table by selling the Honduran. There's a major source of revenue that the club is missing out on, one that can not be measured in a million, two million or even 12 million. It can only be measured in the hundreds of millions.

I'm talking about shirt sales to Honduras, of course. A walk through the crowd at Honduras' Gold Cup match turned out hundreds of Palacios Spurs shirts. It is clear that millions upon millions of Hondurans own Tottenham shirts because of Palacios. Before long over 20 million Hondurans will own Spurs shirts. Can the club really afford to give up that kind of revenue?

What? The walk through the crowd only really turned up one Honduran in a Tottenham shirt (the one pictured above)? Well, 20 million shirt sales to Honduras is still a realistic target. Wait, there are only a tick more then eight million people in the entire country? Ummmm. Crap.