According to the Daily Mail, Tottenham Hotspur chairman Daniel Levy wouldn’t sanction a £50million move for Ruben Dias.
It’s claimed that Spurs wanted to sign Dias in recent times, but were quoted £50million by Benfica – a fee Levy wouldn’t pay.
Back in April 2020, Record claimed that Spurs offered £40million for Dias, so we would assume it was around this time.
Levy wouldn’t pay up, and Manchester City would then come in to sign him in a huge £65million deal.
With a separate fee of £13.6million paid by Benfica for Nicolas Otamendi to go in the opposite direction, you could suggest that City essentially paid £51.4milion plus Otamendi for Dias.
Spurs were seemingly never going to get to that kind of figure, leaving Jose Mourinho lacking a top-quality centre back.
Tottenham instead signed Joe Rodon for about a fraction of the price, hoping that he will eventually develop to become a star in North London.
That hasn’t happened yet, whereas Dias has been a defining addition for City, helping them win the Premier League title and reach the Champions League final.
Spurs may well need to pay up big money for a top centre back in the coming months. Their back line needs re-tooling, and a player like Dias would go a long way to solving some defensive frailties.
Maybe Levy will learn a lesson here, or maybe it was purely down to the global pandemic and he’d have paid up in any other circumstance.
Either way, Dias feels like a very, very big miss for Tottenham right now.
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