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Good morning, Spursland! Welcome to a Monday edition of "Dispatches from #Batcountry" where we break down the craziest, dumbest, and single worst rumors involving the transfer of players to and from Tottenham Hotspur! Today's fun-filled episode involves one of our Belgian Internationals, Moussa Dembele. You may have read a little bit about this in the Hoddle of Coffee today, but this is so special that it needs to be broken down.
The rumor itself is straight-forward: Serie A side Napoli, who took our beloved defender of the darkness, Bat-Vlad Chiriches, off of our hands this summer. Apparently the Italians are not done raiding the Tottenham roster as they have agreed to personal terms with Dembele. That's big news!!!....or is it? It all depends on who is reporting it, right? Let's take a look at that list of outlets, because it's a decent one:
- First up is Sportsmole, who kept their report short and sweet.
- Next we have Football Fancast. They went as far as to talk about a transfer fee.
- London24 decided to jump into the fun by writing up a piece on it.
- Never heard of Winner Sports until today, but I won't discriminate here. They joined in, too.
- HITC wraps up our list, though I'm sure I could hunt and find more.
So, why have all of these outlets jumped onto this? Because of lonely little outlet Tuttosport, who have the battiest of bat country articles:
Euforia in casa Napoli, per i risultati della squadra: il ritorno in massa al San Paolo lo conferma. Intanto si va avanti un passo alla volta e alla sosta di Natale si deciderà come e quanto intervenire sul mercato. Dall'Inghilterra giurano che il diesse Giuntoli abbia già trovato l'accordo con il belga-maliano Dembelé. Centrocampista centrale 28enne, del Tottenham e della Nazionale belga, abile ad interpretare più ruoli: l'offerta di partenza è di 14 milioni. La trattativa continua e non solo per lui: Giuntoli apprezza molto anche l'uruguaiano Matias Vecino. A proposito di centrocampo, a breve il rinnovo con Jorginho. Scade nel 2018, prolungamento fino al 2020, con incremento dell'ingaggio da 600mila euro.
Activating the somewhat accurate Google Machine translates it out basically the way all of these outlets are reporting: Dembele and Napoli have agreed to personal terms but there has been nothing between the clubs, with the report saying that bidding will begin at 14 million, though it doesn't specify whether it's Euros or Pounds, though it's almost certainly in Euros since it's an Italian outlet.
As expected, this article checks all the boxes for Bat Country:
- No quotes from anyone
- No citing of any type of source
- Use of fun words like "reportedly" and "swear" always jazz up an article