Mauricio Pochettino to Real Madrid is rumbling on in Spain but without anything especially concrete on it.
The Tottenham manager spoke several times on Friday as he launched the Spanish version of his book with Guillem Balague.
Pochettino very much sat on the fence and some of his quotes taken in isolation could be used to present him as being determined to stay at Spurs, whereas some other quotes could be used to show a willingness to move to Madrid.
Sport, who had been pushing the idea of a contract clause even after it was denied, have now admitted there’s no actual trigger in Pochettino’s contract which allows a move to Madrid.
But they haven’t completely given up with that, and now state there’s a verbal agreement with Daniel Levy, something which has also been denied.
It’s claimed ‘negotiations are open’ and an agreement could be found although it’s ‘difficult’ to convince Levy. Madrid don’t want to pay €50m for a manager, knowing it could always fail and they’d then be left without any obvious way of getting that money back.
A deadline has been set of Wednesday June 5th, although it’s not clear which club Sport are claiming has done that.
It’s claimed Pochettino wants to manage Real Madrid, but won’t push Spurs too much, and that’s something which isn’t going down well with the blancos.