Earlier on Thursday, it was announced that Georges-Kévin Nkoudou had signed a four-year deal with Besiktas in Turkey, finally escaping the nightmare that was his time at Tottenham.
Arriving from Marseille, the former France U21 international struggled to convince Mauricio Pochettino at the Premier League club, and his promising development stalled.
Two loan deals to Burnley and then AS Monaco hardly helped, and an exit was needed for everyone to move on and forget about the last three or so years.
The lack of game time did make it hard for clubs to judge whether or not Nkoudou would be of use to them, but Besiktas’ director of football, Ali Naibi, didn’t need much from recent outings to be convinced.
He told Ortacizgi.com just before the deal was confirmed: “He has a lot of potential. Hopefully he will show what he can do here. He had a great pre-season with his club and that’s one of the reasons why we chased him”.
See, pre-season isn’t just about fitness. It’s about putting certain players in the shop window too, and for Tottenham, it worked out quite well, as they recouped around half of their original expenditure and managed to negotiate a clause that will see them get 50% of any future sale.
