Sporting honing in on Pedro Porro replacement as Spurs talks continue

This morning, the prospects of Pedro Porro ending up at Tottenham Hotspur by the end of the month are looking better. Two reports emerged overnight — one from transfer guru Fabrizio Romano and another from a newspaper in Portugal that offer a hopeful view that this transfer could get over the line.

First, there’s a tweet from Romano, who says that talks are continuing between Spurs and Sporting, and that the final deal might involve a Tottenham player heading to Lisbon as part of the deal.

There’s been a notable softening of Sporting’s previously hardline stance in this regard — despite earlier reports that they were asking for Porro’s €45m purchase clause in a lump sum, more recent updates have seemingly shown that they could be bargained with. Whether that’s Fabio Paratici and Daniel Levy realizing that there’s a gap in Sporting’s financial armor, or whether it’s just Spurs deciding to overpay in some way to get it across the line remains to be seen.

But then there’s this report from the Record in Portugal — it claims Sporting are now actively looking for Porro’s replacement, have identified Heerenveen wingback Milan van Ewijk, and are already engaging in “concrete” talks to sign him should Porro leave.

Nothing in bat country is an immutable fact — there are countless examples of transfers that looked solid only to fall apart at the last minute for whatever reason. However, this is one that is definitely trending in the right direction. With one week left to go in the transfer window, there’s still time for either scenario.