Tottenham’s deal for Paulo Dybala made difficult by wages, agent fees, image rights

You wanted a Paulo Dybala update? You got one, but it’s not exactly good news. News broke yesterday in a crazy flurry of transfer rumors that Tottenham Hotspur had successfully bid for Juventus forward Paulo Dybala, and the internet went nuts. However, that’s not the end of the story, obviously.

While it seems an agreement is in place between Spurs and Juventus, there is NOT a deal between Spurs and Dybala over wages, and here’s where it gets thorny. Dybala reportedly rejected Manchester United’s wage offer when they were linked since United were not willing to meet his £300k/week salary at Juventus. (It may have also had something to do with United not being in the Champions League, also.)

Enter the Daily Mail (which I will not link to), but first a caveat. We don’t usually use the Mail as sources for transfer rumors as they’re a garbage paper, though we occasionally soften this stance during transfer window deadlines. But this time there are what looks like actual bits of useful information here. Specifically, there are bits that reference Spurs’ initial wage offer to Dybala — the report states that Spurs initially offered £140k/wk, significantly lower than what Dybala wants, but that there might be some wiggle room if he ends up with a wage package that’s comparable to Harry Kane’s.

There are also further complications — Dybala’s agent is demanding a fee in excess of £13m for his services, and Dybala also sold the rights to his image ten years ago to a Maltese company, and Spurs would need to purchase those rights back if they want to, y’know, take photos of him.

All of those things are really interesting! Unfortunately, the Mail’s article leads with a photo of Dybala’s partner in a bikini and a discussion about how she really wants a move to London, because that’s apparently more important and also the Mail is garbage.

The crux of it is that none of these problems are insurmountable if Spurs really want to bring Dybala in, and Juventus apparently wants this to happen too as they want to use the money from Dybala to buy Romelu Lukaku from Manchester United. However, what these issues are going to be is expensive and difficult to complete before the window slams shut on Thursday.

So if you’re stanning for Dybala in lilywhite, keep your powder dry for now.