Tottenham’s move for Cristian Romero has been questioned in Italy, with the price tag for the Argentine leaving some bemused.
Romero completed a move to Spurs yesterday, with Tottenham finally sealing a €50m deal for the Atalanta defender, which could reach €60m if certain bonuses are met.
The price tag is a big one for the Argentine, whose value has skyrocketed after an impressive season on loan with Atalanta and a starring role in Argentina’s Copa America success this summer.
While most haven’t raised their eyebrows at the fee, there is one man who has, and that’s Calciomercato’s Stefano Agresti, who’s pretty unimpressed by the deal that Tottenham chief Fabio Paratici has struck.
He says the move has left many ‘surprised, if not astonished’, particularly when it comes to the valuation put on the player’s head.
For him, paying €50m plus bonuses for a ‘strong defender’ but not the ‘heir of Beckenbauer or Nesta’ seems ‘exaggerated’ to say the least.
While some of that may be because Serie A doesn’t have the financial power of the Premier League, meaning they find the fees paid in England ‘crazy’, he believes there’s something else suspicious going on.
That’s because this is not the first time Paratici has signed Romero, having initially brought him to Juventus for €26m back in 2019.
At the time, that was a big price for a relative unknown, and Agresti says, with a strong hint of sarcasm and suspicion, that something must have ‘thunderstruck’ the then Juventus chief about the defender to justify ‘such a major investment’.
However, a year later, after a loan at Genoa, he was happy to sell for a much lower sum, sanctioning a loan deal with Atalanta that included a €16m purchase clause, which they took up this summer before selling to Tottenham.
Agresti wonders how Paratici valued Romero so high, then sold him on the cheap, only to then value him so highly again this year. He believes there has been some exaggeration going on and that Juventus, in particular, deserve answers.
As far as he’s concerned, there’s been a ‘blatant mistake’ somewhere, with Paratici either undervaluing him in Italy or massively overvaluing him this summer.
Either way, he’s not impressed, and it seems Tottenham’s transfer wizard is now being questioned a lot more back in Italy than he once was, courtesy of his latest purchase.
