Report: promising Tottenham youth midfielder Thorpe to sign with Hoffenheim

In any given transfer window, there are players on the fringes of the first team that leave where you shrug your shoulders and wish them well. There are also players who leave who you are genuinely sad about because they had a bunch of potential that will be realized elsewhere. This is, unfortunately, a story about the latter.

According to a report, 20-year old Tottenham Hotspur central midfielder Elliot Thorpe is set to leave the club and sign with Bundesliga side Hoffenheim on a free transfer.

Thorpe was highly thought of in the Spurs academy as an up and coming central midfielder, but he’s in a crowded field at the moment, as he was competing with fellow academy players Alfie Devine, Nile John and Jamie Bowden. The suggestion is that he turned down a Spurs offer of an extended pro contract to move to Germany on a free transfer.

If true, and we have really no reason to think that it isn’t, he’d be the latest Tottenham youth product to try their luck in Germany, after Reo Griffiths, Keanan Bennetts, and Ismail Izzaoui in recent years. None have really lit it up in the Bundesliga — Bennetts, interestingly, was on loan at Ipswich last season along with Troy Parrott.

You never like losing promising young players, but this might actually be the best thing for Thorpe at the present time. We may or may not get confirmation from the club’s social media channels if this move goes through, as it refers to a recent academy graduate — Spurs often won’t comment on the moves of young players (though sometimes they do).