Well, it seems like we might have an update on AC Milan’s pursuit of Tottenham Hotspur right back Emerson Royal. According to a tweet from Alasdair Gold, Spurs have rejected a “formal offer” from the Serie A giants as they’re holding out for a fee of €20m, and Milan did not meet that threshold.
Now — great, fine. But let’s dig into this a bit. This tweet actually comes on the heels of another one from the depths of Bat Country Sky Sports Italia, which says Milan are thinking of moving on to other targets because Tottenham are too mean. (Apologies for the aggregator tweet, but I can’t find the original source with a bathysphere.)
So what we have here are two football clubs that have been negotiating for the sale of a player for weeks now. Tottenham have their price in mind, Milan have their price in mind, and neither are really willing to budge at the moment. So this is, naturally, the point where (as one of my colleagues put it in the writer’s room) “both clubs start talking about their girlfriends who go to other schools.”
It’s kind of hilarious that both sides are apparently now negotiating via the media by dropping links to other players or clubs — Strahinja Pavlovic for Milan, Dortmund for Tottenham, but this is the Way of Things — these reports will make the rounds and freak out both sets of supporters a bit before they eventually come to the table and hash out an agreement that ends up being, say, €17.5m over five years with a couple of easily-attainable performance clauses. I’ve been around the block a few times here, and 85% of the time that’s how this goes.
I also am amused by the framing that Tottenham have rejected a “formal offer” for the player, as though making an offer FORMAL is somehow the magic sauce that makes a transfer happen and not the weeks of “informal” talks and negotiations where they very obviously lay out how much they’re willing to pay well ahead of time. Extemporaneously dropping the Formal Bid, delivered by royal courier with trumpet fanfare no doubt, feels like an extremely Football Manager conceit. It’s unlikely to move the needle much and is designed more for media pearl-grasping than any substantial dealmaking, at least at this stage.
So anyway, we’re in the predictable high-conflict period of transfer negotiations now. We’ve seen these before. We’ll see them again. Are Milan really interested in their B-target? Yeah, maybe. Is there actual solid interest in Emerson Royal from Dortmund? Who knows! That’s not the point. These are teams trying to get the other one to flinch, and the odds are very good eventually they’ll settle on a fee that will make both of them, if not happy, then at least satisfied. And if it all falls apart? Well, that sucks, but que sera sera.