Lazio interested in Tottenham’s Lloris... on a free transfer

Hugo Lloris’ Tottenham Hotspur tenure is over. He has already let the club know that he is ready for a new opportunity and will not play for Spurs again despite having one year left on his current contract. That’s fine with Spurs; they’ve already signed Guglielmo “Venom” Vicario as his permanent replacement, and Lloris did not attend Tottenham’s preseason tour to Asia and Australia earlier this summer.

But Hugo hasn’t found a home yet despite a few tenuous links earlier in the summer. Today, Dan Kilpatrick writes in the Standard about the strongest link to Hugo yet — an approach from Serie A side Lazio. However, Lazio would like Spurs to basically tear up his contract so he can leave join on a free transfer, while Spurs would still like to get a transfer fee, however small.

A lot of continental European clubs are struggling financially, at least in comparison to the Premier League, so it doesn’t surprise me exactly that Lazio are trying to play the poverty card. That said, Hugo is 36, clearly will not play for Spurs again, and in the last season of his contract; surely it wouldn’t cost more than a couple of million euros to get him off of Spurs’ books.

I’m not exactly a fan of Lazio as a club (Google the club’s history) but I also want what’s best for Hugo and if he wants to go there to play football I’ll accept it. But I also don’t think it sets a particularly good precedent to let Lazio demand he joins them for free. Even a trivial fee is better than nothing, and if Lazio can steamroll Spurs into caving on its former club captain, then who’s to say every club who negotiates with the club for some of Spurs’ deadwood wouldn’t try and do something similar?

I suspect this will drag on for a while, but I do expect that Hugo will depart for somewhere by the end of the window.