Mark your calendars for tomorrow, Wednesday, May 23. That’s the day that Arne Slot’s agent, Rafaela Pimenta, is set to hold showdown talks with Feyenoord’s hierarchy over his future at the club. Pimenta is expected to tell Feyenoord that her client wants to leave the Netherlands to accept the Tottenham Hotspur job, moving to the Premier League as the next stop in his managerial career.
But according to one Dutch media source, if Slot does end up at Spurs, it won’t be for cheap. Slot has a purchase clause in his contract, but it doesn’t kick in until next summer, meaning Feyenoord is well within their rights to demand whatever they want for him. AD Sport writes that Feyenoord is expected to command “Nagelsmann money” in order to let him leave for North London, with the implication that they could demand as much as €25m to let him go.
That’s a pretty princely sum, but there’s precedent — the amount is apparently what Bayern Munich paid to get Julian Nagelsmann out of RB Leipzig a few seasons ago. The article also noted that Todd Boehly paid €18m to pry Graham Potter out of Brighton. That’s the kind of money being thrown around.
Feyenoord obviously wants to do everything humanly possible to keep Slot from leaving them the way he left AZ Alkmaar for Feyenoord two years ago. It’s going to be an uphill battle. If Slot really wants to make the move, he can put an inordinate amount of pressure on the club to let him go. Even so, the previously mooted €6m that it was said it’d cost to get Slot out of Holland is likely a significant undercount.
Everything can be negotiated, so don’t think that Spurs will content themselves with getting rolled. We’ll also know more, probably, by the end of the day tomorrow. But it does sound like Feyenoord has some leverage and they’re going to use it.
