One has just been named in the Bundesliga Team of the Season. The other has won PFA Scotland Young Player of the Year. While Tottenham were having their worst season in the modern era, Luka Vuskovic and Mikey Moore were quietly having the best campaigns of their careers. The question now is what we actually do with them.
Vuskovic is 19. He won Bundesliga Rookie of the Month four times this season, equalling a record set by Victor Boniface. He scored against Bayern Munich. He is the only player in Europe’s top five leagues with 100+ clearances, 100+ duels won, 100+ aerials won, and 100+ ball recoveries in 2025-26. Former Spurs midfielder Steffen Freund put it plainly in February: “He’s too good for HSV.”
Moore is 18. He scored six league goals for Rangers this season, seven in all competitions, including twice in Old Firm derbies. He won PFA Scotland’s Men’s Young Player of the Year. His transfer value has increased by 50% since the loan began. Celtic are interested. Rangers want him back badly.
Both have outgrown where they were. The question is whether they’ve outgrown where we are too.
Luka Vuskovic at Tottenham: the case for bringing him in now
Start with the numbers, because they’re extraordinary.
Luka Vuskovic was voted the Bundesliga’s player of the first half of the season, beating Harry Kane to the award. WhoScored named him in their Team of the Season across Europe’s top five leagues, with an average rating of 7.26. He won 18 aerial duels in a single match against Union Berlin, the first player to do so in Europe’s top five leagues over the previous five seasons.
The German media nicknamed him “Air Vuskovic.” He is the only player in Europe’s top five leagues with 100+ clearances, 100+ duels won, 100+ aerials won, and 100+ ball recoveries in 2025-26. All of that from a centre-back. At 19. In his first season at the highest level.
And then there’s the other side of his game people forget to mention. He scored six Bundesliga goals this season, including one against Bayern Munich and a scorpion kick against Werder Bremen that won the Bundesliga Goal of the Year. A center-back. A scorpion kick. Goal of the Year. Let that settle for a moment.
The original purpose of the loan was to give him first-team experience before he came back to challenge at Spurs. That’s what the loan was supposed to do. He has done it, and then some.
Sporting director Johan Lange travelled to Hamburg personally to hold talks with Vuskovic about his future, and the club are now preparing a bumper new contract to see off interest from Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Liverpool, and Chelsea. Those clubs are circling for a reason.
The defensive picture at Spurs this summer is also pointing in one direction. Romero is expected to leave. Dragusin wants regular game time and is reportedly ready to push for an exit. Van de Ven stays, but next to who? If the answer is “a new signing,” that’s fine. But you have a 19-year-old who just dominated the Bundesliga sitting in your academy system.
The argument for at least giving him a genuine chance to compete for a starting spot is not a romantic one. It’s the logical one.
Luka Vuskovic himself, in a candid interview last week, put it well: “If Tottenham see me as part of their plans, that would also be a very good situation for me. The most important thing for my development is that I play regularly.” That is not a player angling for a move. That is a player who wants to come home and prove himself, on the condition that he gets to actually play.
Luka Vuskovic at Tottenham: The case for one more loan
The Independent reported this week that despite Luka Vuskovic publicly putting his chances of returning to HSV at just 1%, Tottenham are planning exactly that: a new contract, then another year in Germany.
The reasoning, according to sources, is that even with Romero leaving, Van de Ven is staying, new centre-backs are being targeted, and the club feels another year of regular football would serve Vuskovic better than a season on De Zerbi’s bench.
You can see the thinking. De Zerbi will not hand anyone a starting spot on reputation. If Vuskovic arrives in pre-season and is third choice behind Van de Ven and a new signing, and sees 15 minutes of League Cup football before Christmas, that is not better than another full Bundesliga season.
Continuity counts. He knows Hamburg, he knows the system, and he only just returned from a knee injury as this season ended.
Then there’s the World Cup. Vuskovic has been called up to Croatia’s squad, sharing a dressing room with Luka Modric at a tournament every club tracking him will be watching closely. Perform there and he returns to north London in August carrying considerably more weight than he does now.
But here’s what the plan doesn’t account for. Vuskovic publicly said HSV has a 1% chance. The Independent says it’s happening anyway. If Spurs push that through, they’re overriding what their own player wants in favour of a development programme he’s visibly outgrown.
HSV had a rough early stretch before Vuskovic helped pull them to safety, which is partly a testament to him, but asking him to go back and do it all again while Liverpool and Barcelona are sharpening their offers isn’t development planning. It’s hoping a problem solves itself.
The verdict? Bring him in, but not without acknowledging what could go wrong. The case for another loan isn’t entirely stupid. If he sits on De Zerbi’s bench all season, we’ll be having a worse version of this conversation next summer with considerably less goodwill from the player.
So the condition has to be real: bring him home, give him a genuine pre-season, and if the pathway to minutes isn’t there, have an honest conversation rather than shipping him out in September and calling it a plan.
Mikey Moore at Tottenham: The case for keeping him at Spurs
De Zerbi is reportedly keen to assess Mikey Moore as part of his first-team plans for next season. For a manager whose entire philosophy runs on backing players others have written off, a direct, fearless winger who just won Young Player of the Year in a competitive league and scored twice in Old Firm derbies is not a hard sell. The profile fits.
A former Tottenham scout, quoted this week, put it well: “He didn’t always have it easy, he had to fight for his place and eventually he did that — from a Tottenham point of view, that’s ideal.”
Moore actually wanted out of Ibrox at one point when things weren’t working under Russell Martin. Tottenham offered him a way out, and he said no. He stayed, fought for his place, and scored twice against Celtic. That stubbornness is worth something.
He wants to come back and compete for a shirt, not return to Rangers. The boyhood Spurs fan, the kid who became the club’s youngest ever Premier League player, wants to play for his club. At some point that has to count for something.
Mikey Moore at Tottenham: the case for another loan
It comes down to minutes. Spurs have been linked with a move for Savinho from Manchester City, though that link has cooled. But even setting Savinho aside, the wide positions next season involve Kulusevski returning from injury, Odobert back fit, Mathys Tel staying, and whatever De Zerbi adds in the window.
Mikey Moore’s path to regular minutes is not obvious, and “regular” is the operative word here. Cameos off the bench at 18 are not the same as what he had at Rangers.
Danny Rohl has been unambiguous. He wants Moore back from the first day of pre-season and will try everything to make it happen. The Amad Diallo comparison gets made a lot and it’s not wrong. Diallo spent real time at Rangers before becoming a player Manchester United actually relied on.
Moore himself has admitted he’d consider extending at Ibrox if regular football at Tottenham isn’t guaranteed. That’s not a player closing doors. That’s a player being realistic.
The risk of Moore sitting fifth in a wide pecking order for a season is real, and it would undo a lot of what he’s built this year.
Here’s the verdict: Give him pre-season, then be honest about what you see. If De Zerbi watches five friendlies and genuinely sees a player who can impact his first team this season, keep him.
If it becomes clear he’s going to be peripheral, loan him somewhere that’s actually a step up. Not Rangers again. A Premier League club, or a Bundesliga side. Somewhere the football is good enough that another year out doesn’t feel like standing still.
What these two decisions say about Tottenham
Bayern Munich is tracking Vuskovic. Celtic have interest in Moore. If you want to know what happens when Spurs get this wrong, look up Troy Parrott. He bagged 17 goals and five assists on loan in the Netherlands, came back, and the club collected a small transfer fee rather than give him a chance in the first team.
Tim Sherwood at the time said they should have given him the opportunity and spent the money elsewhere. He was right. Parrott went on to score 20 goals in a season for Preston. Spurs bought four different strikers instead, one of whom lasted six months and none of whom improved us.
Spurs are preparing a bumper new contract for Vuskovic. Good. But a contract without genuine minutes is just paperwork that delays the inevitable. If Vuskovic signs and goes straight back to Hamburg while Liverpool are still calling, that contract provides less cover than the club seems to think.
Mikey Moore’s market value has risen 50% this season. That number will keep climbing, and at some point it climbs high enough that selling becomes attractive and keeping becomes complicated. The window to actually use him in a Tottenham shirt is now, not after another loan and another negotiation and another summer of the same conversation.
The loan system served its purpose. Now it’s time to trust them.
Vuskovic won the Bundesliga Goal of the Year with a scorpion kick, beat Harry Kane to a player of the half-season award, and held off a Bayern Munich attack in Hamburg. Moore said no when Tottenham offered him an exit, stayed at Rangers, and scored in two Old Firm derbies. Both of them did what was asked of them, and more.
Earlier this season, Tim Sherwood was asked about Tottenham’s academy and said: “They must have closed it and put a spa in there. Where’s the academy players? There’s a few of them out on loan doing alright. Mikey Moore at Rangers? Bring them back and give them a chance to play.” He said that in February, mid-season, when it was too late to act. It isn’t too late now.
Bring Vuskovic home. Give Moore his pre-season. And if either of them doesn’t get a proper chance this summer, don’t be surprised when someone else is writing about them in three years and we’re left wondering what might have been. We’ve done that enough already.
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