Three years ago, a little-known 19-year-old playing for Charleroi in Belgium turned down a move to Tottenham Hotspur.
“Concerning Tottenham, it is quite clear that the player does not want to go abroad. He is 19, he does not want to skip steps,” the teenager’s agent, Franck Belhassen, told Foot Mercato in 2016.
“Few players have succeeded abroad at such a young age. He is a very reasonable boy and well looked after by his family. He knows what he wants to do. And Tottenham…as a club they probably have other fish to fry.”
So why are we bringing this up now, with two months to go until 2020 rolls in? Well, because that very same player is once again a Tottenham target.
According to The Mail, Jean-Phillipe Mateta is being lined up for a move to North London with Mauricio Pochettino’s side revisiting a deal that hit the buffers back in 2016. The French striker is 22 years of age these days and, having proved his quality in one of Europe’s top five leagues, it seems that he is more than ready to join a club with the status and stature of Tottenham these days.
Mateta plundered 14 goals in the Bundesliga for Mainz last season, three more than he managed for Charleroi in that breakthrough 2015/16 season that had Spurs sniffing around.
He’s tall and rather rangy but lethal in front of goal too, possessing the potential to succeed where Vincent Janssen and Fernando Llorente failed by offering genuine competition for talisman Harry Kane. And with Tottenham hoping to thrive both domestically and on the continent, he would not be short of game time under Pochettino.
Mateta has turned down Tottenham once – he’d be foolish to do so again.
Receive exclusive football transfer news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
