Tottenham Hotspur have signed 20-year-old Eric Dier on a five-year deal, spending £4m (~$6.75m) to bring the defender in from Sporting Lisbon. The deal will be complete once he successfully completes a medical.
But Sporting are displeased with the way that things have turned out. Spurs managed to get a great price on Dier because the youngster was unwilling to participate in contract negotiations, so the club’s bid triggered a release clause. The Portuguese side put up a statement on their website:Over the course of the last month, Sporting Clube de Portugal began negotiations with the athlete Eric Dier for the renewal of his contract. Unexpectedly, Sporting was confronted by the player’s father and official representative with a bid from Tottenham Hotspur, with that bid activating a clause agreed by previous boards of directors for the sale of the player for an amount of €5 million or more, unless the personal terms offered as part of the bid are matched
Furthermore, Sporting was also informed the player did not want to remain with the club even on equal terms, and that any equal or improved personal terms would not have been accepted.
Sporting sound a bit miffed, don’t they? It’s perhaps understandable, as Dier has been with the club for ten years, and signed his first professional contract not even four years ago. It’s unlikely they thought he’d just up and stop talking in the middle of contract negotiations.
Due to Sporting’s current financial restrictions, they would not have been able to match the terms offered by Tottenham. But they sound rather put out at never being able to have that chance.