Jamie O’Hara has admitted that seeing Juan Foyth play a Champions League semi-final makes him angry in the knowledge that Tottenham Hotspur had him once upon a time.
The Argentina international has spent most of his senior career at Tottenham but joined Villarreal on loan last season.
And then last summer, Foyth signed for the Spanish outfit on a permanent basis, with Football London reporting that it was for around £12.8 million.
Spurs still made a profit on the player, who originally cost Mauricio Pochettino around £8 million [The Daily Mail], but at only 24, the South American defender can still secure a much bigger transfer at some point in the future.
He only started one Premier League outing during his final season in North London, with Jose Mourinho clearly not a big admirer of the player – and that’s fair enough, based on his habit of conceding penalties during Pochettino’s reign.
However, his form under Unai Emery is testament to the fact that Foyth – who cited Mourinho as a reason he wanted to go – was a rough player at Spurs and merely needed polishing.
And former Tottenham midfielder O’Hara has admitted that he’s sick over seeing the player’s improvement since leaving the Premier League.
Levy greenlight?
This one is firmly on chairman Daniel Levy, if we’re honest.
Nobody was even at the club last summer when Foyth’s permanent transfer was confirmed; not Nuno Espirito Santo or even Fabio Paratici.
Logically you would think, then, that the Tottenham supremo himself sanctioned Foyth’s exit.
Hell, Villarreal even had an option to make it permanent and Mourinho – manager at the time of Foyth’s loan to Spain – wouldn’t have had the power to include contract clauses of this nature.
Levy has done a lot of smart business down the years, but O’Hara is right; this one has the potential to come back to haunt the Lilywhites in a major way.
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