The feeling in Spain is Tottenham are virtually guaranteed to take up their priority option to buy for a €25m signing in the summer of 2025.
Tottenham waved goodbye to Giovani Lo Celso in the previous window, with the Argentine re-joining former club Real Betis.
Spurs received a modest fee of around €10m / £8.4m, according to the BBC. But as part of that agreement, Tottenham successfully inserted an option to buy into the contract of Real Betis midfielder, Johnny Cardoso.
Spurs can activate their option to buy in a two-week period in June of 2025. The deal would be worth €25m / £21m if triggered.
Tottenham also inserted a sell-on clause into Cardoso’s contract, meaning they’ll be in line to receive a percentage of the fee if Cardoso is sold to another club. Of course, Spurs have priority through the presence of their option to buy.
And according to a fresh update from the print edition of ABC Sevilla, all the signs point towards Tottenham activating their option next summer.
As cited by Sport Witness, Real Betis consider Cardoso moving to north London ‘a certainty.’
Where will Johnny Cardoso fit?
Should Cardoso arrive at Spurs he’ll join a midfield corps that is already congested.
With Ange Postecoglou often deploying Dejan Kulusevski AND James Maddison in a midfield three, that has left just one space spare for Rodrigo Bentancur, Yves Bissouma and Pape Sarr to scrap for.
Cardoso, 23, is a defensive midfielder by trade and the 17-cap USA international will hope to muscle his competitors aside and earn a place in the starting eleven.
Cardoso has started four of Real Betis’ last five LaLiga matches as well as both of their fixtures in the Conference League this season.
Latest Tottenham news – Conte raid / Werner clause
Elsewhere, former Spurs boss Antonio Conte is reportedly weighing up a January raid for Radu Dragusin.
Conte has his Napoli side top of the Serie A table and mid-season reinforcements are being sought to double down on their title challenge.
In other news, Postecoglou is reportedly ‘leaning towards’ ignoring the £8.5m option to buy in Timo Werner’s loan agreement.
If dismissed, Werner would simply return to parent club RB Leipzig at season’s end.
Finally, Gary Neville suggested Tottenham are the reason Manchester United sacked Erik ten Hag.
Neville told Sky Sports earlier this week: “I suspect the Tottenham game was probably a catalyst for them to start thinking about a new manager.
“You look at who is available then you try to think of the timing. You are half hoping the manager can turn it around but 99 times out of 100, the tide is against you and continues to go against you.
“They’ve probably chosen a moment that was decided a few weeks ago – that the next bad loss or bad result, we’re probably going to have to act. That has come yesterday [vs West Ham]
“They would have started the process of finding Erik ten Hag’s successor, definitely, because that Tottenham game a few weeks ago did feel like the end.”
Who is Johnny Cardoso?
European football expert Andy Brassell previously gave his verdict on Cardoso in the aftermath of Tottenham’s option to buy being announced.
“Quite an interesting backstory, so he was born in the USA to Brazilian parents but he moved back to Brazil when he was three or four months old,” explained Brassell.
“To all intents and purposes, he is a Brazilian player, he’s come through the system there before going over to Betis.
“Very popular, very energetic, you can imagine Cardoso working really well in the Premier League because he loves a tackle, he loves to get stuck in, so you can imagine him protecting that Tottenham defence going forward.”
TEAMtalk’s features specialist, Ryan Baldi, has taken an even deeper dive into exactly what type of player Spurs are on course to sign…