Japhet Tanganga missed out on the chance to leave the Premier League for Serie A before Tottenham Hotspur finalised a deal with Bundesliga outfit Augsburg instead.
That is according to the defender’s agent, Roberto de Fanti opening up about the negotiation which eventually saw Japhet Tanganga move to Bavaria on an initial loan deal.
The Tottenham Hotspur academy graduate was initially supposed to replace Italy international Alessandro Buongiorno at Torino. That was, however, until negotiations which would have taken Buongiorno to Atalanta for a cool £22 million collapsed, leaving Tanganga in the lurch until Augsburg tossed an escape rope in his direction.
Tottenham’s Tanganga misses out on Serie A switch
“(Tanganga’s) arrival was linked to a departure,” De Fanti tells Tuttomercatoweb. “The negotiation began when Buongiorno was about to go to Atalanta.
“(Torino director Davide) Vagnati has always had a great passion for Tanganga, a defender who debuted with Jose Mourinho and also played with Antonio Conte, who blocked his transfer to AC Milan in 2022.
“It then happened that Buongiorno did not go to Atalanta. The negotiation fell through. In the end we finalised the loan transfer with right of redemption to Augsburg, a German club very oriented towards taking players from the Premier League.”
Now in Germany instead
Tanganga, Man of the Match in a 1-0 win over Manchester City for Nuno Espirito Santo’s Spurs side only two years ago, is now looking to kick-start his stalling career at a club who have raided English shores in the past for the likes of Kevin Mbabu, Reece Oxfor and Andi Zeqiri.
According to Kicker, 24-year-old Tanganga has a £5 million purchase clause in his Augsburg contract. Whether he impresses enough to earn himself a permanent stay in Germany, however, only time will tell.
Tanganga is edging closer to a long-awaited FCA debut, at least, returning to training after a troublesome knee injury which has kept him out of contention thus far (Augsburger Allgemeine).
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