Bat Country: Zidane demands Real Madrid sign Eriksen

Tottenham Hotspur are in the final week of a 22-day layoff that has felt like three months. We’re all bored, international football only scratches the itch a bit and, quite frankly, I think we just all need to get back to regular football. The good news is that after this week, there are no more international breaks! The bad news is that transfer rumors don’t have an offseason and we still have to read the dumbest and most obvious stories out there. That brings us to this article’s topic: Christian Eriksen.

As you all know, we are an aggregator. We find news, link you to the article which may or may not have good sourcing, and give you our thoughts on it. Sometimes, we have to go digging because other reporters like to give a story but won’t link to the original source. One such reporter is Ricky Sacks, who dropped this today on Twitter:

Okay, this isn’t Earth-shattering news. It’s the lowest of low hanging fruit, but the wording in there suggests that there has at least been something said to a beat writer by Zidane, Perez or someone. Well...not exactly. Here’s Talking THFC saying nearly the exact same thing:

Now, to be fair, sometimes this is in print media and finding it online is impossible. L’Equipe is one such publication that saves their best stories for print in order to sell issues, and that makes sense! More often than not, though, the case is that the link isn’t there for reasons we don’t know. I used to understand it because of Twitter being limited by 140 characters, but with the increase it makes little sense not to link to the story, but I digress.

It took a little digging, but we found the article involving these tweets from El Confidencial, a publication based out of somewhere in Spain. The article has almost no new information and repeats ad nauseam what we already knew: Zidane is in charge and basically wants to spend a billion Euros on everyone.

Zidane siguió solicitando el fichaje de un especialista defensivo cada verano, pero no llegó nadie para complementar a Casemiro en esa labor. Ahora, Zidane tiene poder a la hora de elegir los refuerzos y el técnico ha puesto el foco en esa debilidad que siempre apreció en la plantilla. Florentino ha terminado por ceder y el entrenador ha exigido dos contrataciones para el mediocampo: una de un futbolista que genere juego, y que si nada cambia será la del danés Christian Eriksen, que ya ha rechazado varias ofertas de renovación del Tottenham (acaba contrato el verano de 2020), y el otro refuerzo es el de un jugador de músculo defensivo para blindar el mediocampo.

For those who don’t speak Spanish, basically the quote is taken out of a long explanation. The beginning of the article has Zidane locked in on N’Golo Kante and Tanguay N’Dombele. The context is a tad weird, but it seems that Eriksen is plan B but honestly, who the heck really knows because this is pure conjecture and speculation. We already know that Real Madrid have targeted Eden Hazard, Kylian Mbappe, Neymar, N’Golo Kante and anyone else that will cost over 100 million.

We know Christian Eriksen has a secret plan for his career. We’ve known this since just after he signed with Tottenham back in the summer of 2013. Eriksen is now 27 years old and is entering that window of time where he has reached his prime and is looking for that final massive contract, and rightfully so. He’s an engine for any side that few can match. Eriksen’s secret plan probably isn’t that secret and he wants to play at a mega club like Real Madrid, Barcelona, etc. I don’t think anyone would blame him for wanting such a thing because it means he’ll probably make close to €300k/week which Tottenham will not match. All reports have said that Eriksen is happy in north London and this is basically just business. If a mega club doesn’t come calling, the belief is that he has a £200k/week offer on the table from Tottenham that is waiting to be signed.

The reason this is marked Bat Country is because none of this is new information and, sometimes, we just have to do a PSA when it comes to aggregation and transfer rumors that are obvious at best and, at worst, lazy. This is closer to the latter. It’s a single comment in an article about Zidane demanding all the money from Florentino Perez and Eriksen is on a shortlist that anyone would love to buy. No actual quotes are given, no comments from Eriksen or his agent, and El Confidencial will get clicks based on it because it’s news around Real Madrid which basically generate money on their own.

The saga continues, of course, and we probably won’t know the final chapter for awhile.