A lot was written about Tottenham Hotspur’s pursuit of Milan Skriniar over the past couple of months, with multiple reports confirming that the Inter Milan defender was Jose Mourinho’s number one central defensive target in the transfer window (Football.London).
It looked at one point as if the deal was extremely close, with Tottenham’s technical performance director Steve Hitchen even being spotted in Italy with Skriniar’s agent (Gianluca Di Marzio).
However, the North Londoners ultimately failed to get a deal for the Slovakian international over the line before Monday’s deadline, with reports indicating that they could not agree on a fee with Inter Milan (Fabrizio Romano).
However, according to a new report by FC Inter News (as translated by Sport Witness), it was not Spurs’ unwillingness to a pay Inter’s asking price that proved the undoing of the transfer but rather how late Tottenham left it.
The report asserts that Paris Saint-Germain also made a late offer for Skriniar worth around €40m plus a further €5m based on performance bonuses, which is said to be similar to the final offer Spurs had put forward.
It is claimed that, had Inter received these offers a few days earlier than they did, they may have accepted them but they turned both Tottenham and PSG down as they did have enough time to sign a replacement for the 25-year-old.
Spurs Web Opinion
Based on this report, it very much sounds like we tried a similar approach to the one Manchester United did for the Sancho deal, whereby we pushed it late in the hope that they would lower their valuation. However, Inter seem to have stuck to their guns. One would hope that Spurs return with another offer for Skriniar in January but that is unlikely to be the case if we do end up completing a deal for Joe Rodon.
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