It turns out that Tanguy Ndombele’s career trajectory could have been quite different, with a former official from Turkish side Bursapor admitting that they had almost signed the midfielder prior to his switch to Tottenham.
Ndombele will undoubtedly go down as the biggest flop in Tottenham’s history, with the club failing to get much of a return on the record £63m fee that they paid to sign him from Lyon back in 2019.
At the time, it looked like the Frenchman was on the cusp of evolving into one of the best midfielders in the world but his career has nosedived over the last few years.
The 27-year-old has failed to even nail down a starting spot on loan at Galatasaray this season, with his performances at Rams Park continuing to be heavily criticised.
Just a few days ago, journalist Sercan Dikme even asked for the on-loan Tottenham man’s contract to be ripped up, questioning why he is getting any minutes at all (GS Gazete).
Bursapor almost saved Spurs from £63m Ndombele deal
It turns out that Ndombele could have ended up in Turkish football many years ago if things had gone a little differently.
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Ozhan Pulat, who used to be an assistant coach and scout chief at Bursapor between 2015 and 2017, has now revealed that the club had an agreement in place for the midfielder’s transfer when he was at Amiens, only for the French club to pull the plug on the deal at the last moment.
He told NTV Sport: “We found a player called Tanguy Ndombele. He was playing for Amiens in France League 2. We went to the player’s dressing room and he was very keen to come to our club.
“For €2.5m, we were able to finalise his transfer to Bursaspor. We had reached an agreement with his agent on everything, but the technical director at the time did not agree. Afterwards, Ndombele did very well at Lyon and Tottenham.”
Spurs Web Opinion
The mistake Tottenham made in signing Ndombele is not one I can see the current regime repeating. It is clear that Johan Lange and Ange Postecoglou now put a lot of emphasis on a player’s personality and attitude as they are very specific on the type of characters they want to add to the Spurs dressing room.
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