Emerson Royal is one of those good players who is nevertheless a terrible fit for Ange Postecoglou’s tactics at Tottenham Hotspur, and one that Spurs will likely try and offload this summer. So we shouldn’t be at all surprised that we’re now starting to see news articles linking him to other clubs. In fact, this is a good thing! It means there’s definitely a market for Royal in this summer’s transfer window, and Spurs are likely going to fetch a decent price for him.
This is the first “real” rumor I’ve seen linking Emerson away — I have “real” in quotes because it’s an Italian media rumor from Gazzetta dello Sport that says he’s a player of significant interest to AC Milan. (For those new: Gazzetta is on the upper end of the Italian media reliability scale, but they’ll often still run with the most tenuous of stuff so take everything with a few hefty grains of salt.)
Milan wants to strengthen in several areas this offseason, and right fullback is absolutely one of them. They note his Premier League experience, his ten caps for Brazil, and they liked what they saw defending Theo Hernandez in the Champions League last season.
The only problem is that “€30m (£25.8m) is a lot of money for a jelly” (a reference to Emerson’s “Royal Jelly” nickname) and the report doesn’t see spending that kind of cash on any player that isn’t a goal-scoring center forward. That IS a significant issue — my guess, however, is the £26m valuation is what Spurs would ideally want from a Premier League club. I can see a situation where, if Emerson doesn’t find a Premier League suitor, Spurs will look to the continent, and if that’s the case his price will probably drop because most of the continental football clubs are still skint.
But this piece is interesting, and sets a bit of a baseline of what we might expect this summer should we opt to offload Emerson Royal. I doubt anything gets resolved anytime soon, but the idea of actually selling a player for a decent fee feels novel and exciting, doesn’t it?