Tanguy Ndombele is still a Tottenham Hotspur player.
It has been clear for a few years now that the Frenchman has no place at Spurs. He’s surplus to requirements, but the North Londoners have been struggling to find a buyer for him.
Signing Ndombele has proved to be a big mistake, but the only reason Tottenham brought him in was because they couldn’t land Mauricio Pochettino’s priority target in 2019.
Frenkie De Jong is the reason why Tottenham signed Tanguy Ndombele
Tottenham reached the Champions League final in 2019, and Pochettino was expecting to be backed by Daniel Levy in that summer’s transfer window.
Spurs’ squad was in serious need of reinforcements at that point. They needed new players to go to the next level, and Pochettino had a few names in mind.
One of them was then-Ajax star Frenkie De Jong.
Football London reveal that Tottenham had kept an eye on the Dutch midfielder in the first half of the 2018/19 campaign and made him their priority target in midfield.
Just as they were getting ready to make a move for De Jong, Barcelona swooped in. The Catalan giants agreed a deal with Ajax to sign the midfielder for £65 million in January 2019 (BBC). The deal went through in the following summer.
Tottenham missed out on their priority target, so Pochettino and Spurs’ technical performance director Steve Hitchen decided to go after the next name on their list.
That player was Ndombele, who was signed from Lyon for a club-record fee of £63 million (Sky Sports).
De Jong has been a huge success at Barcelona since, while we all know what has happened to Ndombele at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Tottenham missed out on two other superstars in 2019
Tottenham spent good money in 2019, but it still has to be regarded as a terrible window for the club.
Their two big signings in that window, Ndombele and Giovani Lo Celso, have both failed to live up to expectations in a Spurs shirt.
It has now been revealed that De Jong was the player Tottenham preferred over Ndombele. The same report claims Lo Celso wasn’t the first-choice target either.
Tottenham actually tried to sign two other players before the Argentine – Bruno Fernandes and Paulo Dybala.
For different reasons, those moves failed to materialise, and Spurs had to settle for Lo Celso in the end.