Report: Tottenham attempting to renegotiate Kulusevski purchase option

Tottenham Hotspur are expected to make the 18 month loan deal for Dejan Kulusevski into a permanent signing this summer. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a little negotiation to do. According to a report from Rahman Osman in London World, Spurs are attempting to negotiate with Juventus to winnow down the nearly £30m transfer fee as dictated by Spurs’ purchase option.

Now, if you read social media, you may have noticed that a lot of people have absolutely lost their mind over this. Don’t listen to them — this is fine and even good. Remember, as part of the initial 18 month loan deal with Juventus, Spurs had a larger purchase obligation that only kicked in if they qualified for the Champions League this season. They didn’t do that, so the deal reverted to a purchase option for a smaller fee, and that gives Levy and Spurs a little more wiggle room to make a small deal.

There’s been some suggestion that this may involve asking to restructure the terms of the amortization so that Juventus may agree to reduce the fee by a few million in exchange for, say, Spurs putting a little more money in an up-front payment. That’s an area where both Spurs and Juventus could find some common ground.

Think of it this way — it hurts absolutely no one to ask Juventus if they’ll shave a little bit off the transfer fee. Juventus clearly don’t want him back, and in fact they could use the cash for their own transfer dealings this summer. The worst that can happen is Juventus says no deal... and Spurs still have the original purchase option which they would absolutely take up. But if they can, what club wouldn’t want to save a little money? This is absolutely fine and the kind of thing clubs do all the time.

To make it explicitly clear, I think there’s only an infinitesimally small chance that Deki’s loan isn’t made permanent this summer. The rest of it is just horse trading. He’ll be a Spurs player next year, guaranteed.