I woke up this morning to a number of reports from top English and European football news sources, all saying the same thing: Tottenham Hotspur have chosen Feyenoord manager Arne Slot as their top choice to become the next Spurs manager, and are preparing an offer to make it so.
The Athletic states that Slot has leaped ahead of the other candidates such as Ruben Amorim and Roberto De Zerbi (both of whom have committed their futures to their current clubs), and that Spurs are working on a formal offer to submit to Feyenoord for his services. Dan Kilpatrick in the Standard agrees, and says that Slot is interested in the job, telling his agent to make it happen. That agent, according to De Telegraaf, is expected to hold talks with Feyenoord, this week.
It won’t be for free. Sami Mokbel in the Mail (yes, I know) suggests that it could cost Spurs £6m or more to pry Slot out of his existing contract. Slot apparently DOES have a release clause in his contract, but it doesn’t kick in until the summer of 2024. Mokbel also states Feyenoord would demand more because Slot would want to bring two of his assistants with him to North London.
That’s a lot of smoke in the air for a Monday morning, but it’s all saying basically the same thing and more or less corroborating the fact that Slot appears to be The Guy™. It does beg the question of what’s going on with the Director of Football role, which if Spurs were following a good process would be done by now. But maybe this is an opportunity that has sprung up, and all of the potential DoF (or, if you believe some reports, Head of Recruitment) targets have been briefed about the possibility of working with Slot.
Yowza! A lot to chew on here. But gotta say, so long as Spurs are able to get its backroom structure in place some way or another to support him, I’m getting pretty excited about the impending Slottenham Hotspur era. There’s a lot to like about him, and he’s bald!
