Report: Tottenham and Manchester City locked in bidding war for de Ligt

18-year old Ajax central defender Matthijs de Ligt has emerged as one of the top transfer targets for Tottenham Hotspur this summer, but Spurs aren’t the only ones who are interested in him. And according to a tweet from an Italian journalist, those two are currently duking it out in the opening days of the transfer window for his services.

NIcolo Schira is a journalist for Calciomercato and Gazetta dello Sport, and the Italian football media is unreliable at the best of times, so caveat lector and all that. Still, if this tweet is accurate then it means that de Ligt’s rumored value to Ajax is around £50m, which is pretty much what people thought before the window opened.

Spurs getting into a bidding war with City is not exactly what you want to happen, because if City want to overpay for a player they will have no problems blowing Tottenham out of the water. If you want something to be optimistic about, though, it’s this: de Ligt has said publicly that money wasn’t going to be the prime motivation for finding his new club, and there have been hints that he was very open to a move to Tottenham.

We expected that Tottenham would waste no time in getting their business done in this window, and if this is accurate, it would certainly confirm that theory. That’s not to say there won’t be bumps in the road, though.