Finally! Tottenham reach full agreement with Sporting for transfer of Pedro Porro

It’s done. Finally. After all the negotiating, the protracted talks, the supporter angst, the doubts that Tottenham Hotspur would be able to reach an accord with Sporting CF over the transfer of Spanish wing back Pedro Porro... after all that, it’s just nice to finally hear Fabrizio Romano say those three little words.

According to numerous sources over the last few days, Sporting have been kinda shits during talks, moving the goalposts and delaying in order to give them time to find a replacement for Porro. That probably shouldn’t irritate me considering we have Daniel Levy as our chairman, but for some reason it did. But Sporting did get some concessions — reports say that the final transfer fee, including escalators, is €48m, which is €3m OVER Porro’s oft-noted release clause. But he’s signing on a five year deal which is pretty darned good. No word on what his wages will be.

But Tottenham didn’t pay the release clause, which would’ve required all the money up front. The deal was negotiated to be amortized over a number of years and with a few performance-based escalators thrown in as well. Spurs may have overpaid, but they did it in order to spread out the payment over time.

One of the concessions was that Porro be made available to play in tonight’s Portugal League Cup final, a match that ended in a 2-0 home loss to Porto. Afterwards, Porro said goodbye to the fans.

It obviously would’ve been nice to blood Porro into the side against an easier opponent like Preston North End, like Spurs were able to do with Arnaut Danjuma today. But I’ll still take it. Porro still has to fly to London, complete the medical, and sign the paperwork, but once he does that he now has a week to get up to speed before Spurs host Manchester City at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this coming weekend.