In this article, we take a look at the 5 most expensive player sales Tottenham Hotspur have pulled off in their entire history.
5. Luka Modrić
It is baffling that even after well over a decade, Modrić remains one of Spurs’ biggest sales, that too at €35 million.
Modrić joined Spurs in 2008 for €22.5 million, arriving from Dinamo Zagreb, He would go on to feature in 160 games for them, scoring 17 goals and providing 24 assists before moving to Real Madrid.
Interestingly, Modrić was rated La Liga’s worst signing of the 2012/13 season. The rest, as they say, is history.
Back in the noughties, at the height of their powers, United weren’t usually known for making last-ditch signings by paying over the odds for a player accelerating towards 30 years of age, but that’s exactly what they did for Berbatov and in the process handed Daniel Levy another excellent trade.
The €38 million United paid for Berbatov was indeed a steep price, but one can say it worked out for all parties. At Spurs, the Bulgarian legend made 102 appearances, scoring 46 times and assisting 29 times, while for United he delivered 56 goals and 26 assists in 149 games, accruing a fair bit of silverware along the way.
Walker arrived at Spurs as a teenager in 2009 for €5.9 million from hometown club Sheffield United and left for Man City in his late 20s for €52.7 million. Now 34, he still retains most of the attributes that made him very good at White Hart Lane, only that his time with Guardiola has firmly established him as one of England’s best-ever fullbacks.
There are no regrets here for any involved party. Walker’s exit from Spurs had become inevitable by 2017, and the club got a record deal for him. His pedigree at City, meanwhile, speaks for itself.
Harry Kane’s last season at the club really indicated that his exit was inevitable and he needed to go elsewhere in pursuit of silverware. in fact, Kane wanted to leave Spurs in 2021 as well, but owing to the six-year contract extension he had signed in 2018, he had little leverage on his side, while Daniel Levy held all the cards.
And it was Levy who ultimately came out on top in this battle of wits as he managed to make Bayern Munich cough up €95 million for an injury-prone veteran in the final year of his contract.
Talk about a masterclass.
In his debut season at the Allianz Arena, Kane was exceptional and yet missed out of silverware. One expects him to win something before he leaves Bayern, but for now there’s only one unequivocal winner of this saga, and that’s the Tottenham chairman.
Once Real Madrid come calling, there really isn’t much a team can do instead of getting the best deal they can for their player. Suffice to say, Spurs did just that. Eleven years have passed, and yet Bale remains Spurs’ most expensive export at €101 million.
Los Blancos fans will debate until the end of time whether Bale was a success for them. But from the outside, one may look at the numbers, the moments, the silverware, and safely say that yes, he was.
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