During the past couple of months, we’ve been covering many stories from Portugal linking the Sporting midfielder Bruno Fernandes to Tottenham Hotspur.
One of these articles even made it to A Bola’s front page, and later the interest was backed up by a few other sources, making it quite plausible that Tottenham are indeed after the player.
But Sporting seem to have no intention to let Fernandes go in the next transfer market, no matter for what price. This is something that has been reported often, and today, newspaper Record brings a long story about it.
They claim that Sporting are rejecting any meeting for the player, not giving the interested clubs a chance to explain their transfer intentions.
Even though Portuguese clubs hardly reject big amounts of money, this time Sporting would be so satisfied with Fernandes’ form that they want to keep him at the club at least one more year.
So it sounds like Tottenham still haven’t had a chance to make advances on the situation.
Meanwhile, the local press continues to put Fernandes’ €100m release clause as an ‘opportunity’ for the summer market. As the clause expires in July, Sporting would be demanding even more for the player afterwards.
But this information still sounds pretty crazy to us, and we bet that an offer of over €50m from Spurs would make the Lions consider a sale.
Portuguese clubs often use their local press as transfer PR, and there’s every chance that’s the case again here. Getting the idea out that Sporting don’t want to sell, strengthens their negotiating position, and makes a €50m deal appear reasonable when it previously may not have looked that way.
But Sporting are dealing with Daniel Levy here, so it’s not likely to work.
