Report: Tottenham to make £77m bid for Lautaro Martinez

Say this for Tottenham Hotspur — they may have been rebuffed from their pursuit of Alessandro Bastoni, but that hasn’t kept them from trying to go back to the Internazionale well. Tonight, there’s a report from Italian football journalist Alfredo Pedulla that claims Spurs are preparing a €90m bid for Inter striker Lautaro Martinez. That’s... a lot of €s.

The report is (obviously) in Italian, but here’s the gist courtesy of my graduate school experience in reading Romance languages and an up close and personal relationship with Google Translate.

In short, Lautaro doesn’t want to leave Inter. Like, at ALL. But, just like with the Bastoni saga, Inter need to sell at least one good player in order to make ends meet. Pedulla claims that Spurs are preparing to test Inter’s resolve (and Martinez’s love for Inter) but tabling a monster bid of €90m (~£77m) to lure him to North London ostensibly to play behind (or beside?) Harry Kane. Pedulla says that Conte absolutely loves Lautaro, and if Spurs do table a bid, it’ll come down to whether Inter thinks it’s too much money to turn down and gives Lautaro a healthy shove out of the door.

Of course, we’ve heard this before with Bastoni and know how that turned out. Again this is a rumor about an expensive Conte favorite who just doesn’t seem to be all that into Tottenham, but who might just end up here anyway.

Pedulla is one of the more reliable(ish) rumor-mongers in the Italian football ecosystem, which isn’t saying a whole lot but certainly isn’t nothing. I wouldn’t bet the farm that this is going to happen, but it does look like there might be some smoke behind this particular rumor. I for one would be thrilled with Lautaro starting alongside Kane in a 3-5-2 and otherwise he’d be the most ridiculous depth signing we’ve seen at Tottenham in ages. I kinda hope it happens. We’ll see if it actually does.

Can’t wait to see just how more bonkers this window can get.