Tottenham target Matthijs de Ligt wants to leave Ajax

Eighteen year old Ajax defender Matthijas de Ligt is one of Europe’s hottest young center backs and has been prominently linked with a move to the Premier League this summer. Tottenham Hotspur has been closely monitoring the 18-year old defender and Mauricio Pochettino reportedly likes him a great deal.

There’s more good news: Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf is reporting that de Ligt has decided that he wants to leave Ajax, with Spurs as a possible destination along with Manchester City, Barcelona, and Bayern Munich.

However, there’s some bad news too: de Ligt has a new “football advisor” who is helping him with any future move, and that advisor is none other than super-agent Mino Raiola.

Raiola isn’t de Ligt’s agent — he’s represented by Barry Hulshoff — but Raiola being involved in negotiations is bad news if you were hoping that Spurs might convince de Ligt to sign with a reasonable bid and the promise of playing with Davinson Sanchez again. Raiola represents a host of football superstars including Paul Pogba, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Romelu Lukaku, and Blaise Matuidi. And Raiola’s claim to fame is that he gets the best possible deal for his clients.

There are unsubstantiated rumors that Raiola isn’t keen to try and negotiate with Daniel Levy, which could complicate negotiations if Spurs really are interested, but Raiola being involved probably means that de Ligt’s transfer fee has probably gone up. There are some reports that suggest that he could end up costing between £40-50m, which is pretty crazy for a teenage defender.

De Ligt is a super solid player, very young, and could develop into a superstar, but we’ll have to wait and see whether Spurs are serious about him as a potential replacement for Toby Alderweireld, and whether they get priced out of his services.