Report: Tottenham negotiating with Atletico Madrid for Emerson Royal loan

While most Tottenham Hotspur fans are primarily interested in who’s coming into the club, Spurs also have a lot of outgoing business to do as well. Emerson Royal is one of the players who has been linked with a move away from Spurs, only one season after he joined the club under then-manager Nuno Espirito Santo.

Today, TuttoMercatoWeb journalist (lol I know) Marco Conterio is reporting on Twitter that Spurs are currently in negotiations with Atletico Madrid for a season-long loan for Royal.

It also looks like there would be a purchase option at the end of this loan. Run this tweet through Google Translate and you get the phrase “right of redemption” which sure sounds like it, and regardless “right of redemption” sure is a fun way to say “loan option” and more people should use that phrasing regardless.

It feels a little harsh on Emerson to ship him off so soon after signing him. He had an up and down season for Spurs but started to hit his stride in Tottenham’s run-in, and to be fair to him he was signed for a different manager in a very different play style than what he ended up playing under Antonio Conte. But Conte has a very specific idea of the kind of wingbacks he wants to use, and Emerson doesn’t really fit that mold.

If this loan were to go through it wouldn’t be the first right back we’ve sent to Atletico. Spurs famously shipped Kieran Trippier there in 2019; since then Trippier has returned to the Premier League with Newcastle.

This is an Italian media rumor and we should be careful with those, but Conterio has been relatively solid on rumors in the past, so I wouldn’t be at all shocked if there’s some truth here. We’re at the end of the fiscal year, so I also wouldn’t be surprised if we see some actual movement on both outgoings and incomings before the end of the week.