Pedro Porro’s Tottenham signing will be a loan with purchase obligation

Pedro Porro is now reportedly in London to conduct his medical at Tottenham Hotspur ahead of finalizing a transfer from Sporting CF in a deal that is said to be worth €45m-48m. Only it won’t be a full transfer at all, at least not initially. Alasdair Gold is reporting this morning that the deal taking Porro to North London is instead a loan, with a purchase obligation.

Now, there are lots of reasons why Spurs might want to do that. For starters, it’s just kind of what Spurs do right now, especially under Fabio Paratici. The deals for Dejan Kulusevski and Giovani Lo Celso were notably loan-to-buy arrangements, and I know that there are more in the recent past that my coffee-deprived brain isn’t thinking of at this precise moment.

A loan with a purchase obligation is basically just a payment plan for a player that has some positive accounting benefits, particularly for the buying club. It’s almost certainly what Spurs have spent the past week or so negotiating with Sporting about; in an accompanying article, Gold states that the loan-to-buy structure was done at the request of Sporting so that the purchase fee is represented in the following fiscal year rather than this current one.

Everything is expected to be done today with a formal announcement of Porro’s signing coming this afternoon. But considering the twists and turns that have already taken place in this deal, I probably won’t feel good until I see him holding the shirt in a “WELCOME TO TOTTENHAM” tweet.