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If there was a Tottenham Hotspur youth player that had the biggest splash in this current Premier League season, it was definitely Japhet Tanganga. The 21 year old center back emerged not only as a promising young player, but even started to enter the center back rotation under Jose Mourinho this winter. His performances weren’t always stellar, but he showed enough to convince Mourinho and his staff to try and keep him around.
There were ongoing discussions about extending TangGang’s contract, which was set to expire in 2021, but those talks hit the skids along with the rest of football. However, according to Tanganga’s agent, Roberto Di Fanti, that doesn’t mean that Japhet is set to leave Spurs. According to Di Fanti, things are just on pause while the world works out this whole coronavirus thing.
Here’s Di Fanti speaking to Tuttomercatoweb:
“We were in talks with Tottenham for renewal but this crisis obviously slowed everything down. When it ends we will resume the interrupted negotiations. We hope that on his return he will also be called into the national team, given that it is rumored that he was already in [England boss Gareth] Southgate’s thoughts despite his very young age.”
Japhet reportedly doesn’t make much at the moment on his initial professional contract — some reports say as little as £1k/wk — and he’ll certainly be making a lot more than that whenever he signs a new deal, whether that’s at Spurs or elsewhere. All reports are that Tanganga is happy at Spurs and enjoys playing under Mourinho, so there’s probably no reason to worry that he might decide to play hardball and reject a new deal that would force the club to sell him. My guess is that we’ll get an announcement reporting his new deal with the club in due course.