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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Tottenham Hotspur are interested in a striker.
The theme of Silly Season 2020 has been Spurs never-ending search for a suitable backup to Harry Kane. Spurs have searched far and wide, from as far north as Scotland to as south as Italy. I’m honestly stunned a couple of links to MLS strikers didn’t appear, but either way this search is ending by October 5.
Alasdair Gold has a report out today that Spurs may have been gift-wrapped a deal that will send 25-year-old Carlos Vinicius from Portugal to England.
Following on from this morning's story, Spurs are trying to close a loan with an option to buy for £36.3m deal for Benfica striker Carlos Vinicius. The 25-year-old was Jose Mourinho's number one target this summer. The Brazilian scored 24 goals and laid on 13 assists last season.
— Alasdair Gold (@AlasdairGold) September 30, 2020
Simply put, Benfica bowed out of the Champions League and now need to shed some wages. Gold is saying it’s not a done deal, but it helps.
Spurs initially wanted to sign the player earlier in the window but the price was too high. The Portuguese side's exit from the Champions League has helped matters slightly. You can also loan more than one player from a non-PL club so it does not affect the Gedson loan.
— Alasdair Gold (@AlasdairGold) September 30, 2020
Spurs have been linked to over half of Europe’s strikers at this point [citation needed] and while it’s fun to look up who Wout Weghorst is and whether or not he’s actually good, we’re growing a bit weary of The Great Striker Search™ and would like it to end.
Vinicius would be a perfectly good option off the bench. Last year he did quite well, as Gold suggested in his tweet, including an eye-popping 1.22 G+A/90 in domestic play. We’ve also seen more than one report that the recently striker inquiries have been loans with options to buy. At this point in the transfer window, Spurs probably need to sell someone for outright purchases (Still waiting on the Skirinar deal for that reason, maybe...) and a loan makes a lot of sense.
Benfica being eliminated from Champions League hurts them quite a bit as it means not tapping into the lucrative prize money the top European competition brings. Benfica are also a bit loaded at the striker position with newcomers Luca Waldschmidt and Darwin Nunez joining Haris Seferovic and Vinicius, who seems like the odd man out. Benfica probably want to cash in on him, given his value. That seems to be the sticking point in the deal, which also is the problem with the possible move of Arkadiusz Milik.
In short, we have another striker target and basically the same problem: Levy wants a loan. The parent club wants a sale. The two have to find a middle ground. The window closes on Monday so time is running short to get deals over the finish line.