Villarreal buy option for Juan Foyth is cheaper than bid Tottenham rejected earlier this summer

Reportedly, Leeds bid 25m for Juan Foyth earlier this summer. Such a fee would obviously be higher than Villarreal was likely to pay for the Tottenham player, but now it is being reported by Fabrizio Romano that Villarreal will take the player on a loan to buy with the buy option set at 15m.

To understand why our buy option is cheaper than what Leeds offered for the defender already, we should probably look at the Paco Alcacer deal as an example. Paco was at one point reportedly going back to Valencia for much more money than Villarreal eventually paid for him, largely because Valencia looked set to sell Rodrigo to Barcelona. When that deal fell through, so did the move from Dortmund to Valencia for Paco.

In the same way, Spurs received a high bid from Leeds earlier this year, but since then market situations have changed. Leeds bought Diego Llorente from Real Sociedad for a very similar fee to what they offered for Foyth, and so that bid is now off the market. There have reportedly been two bids from Italy for Foyth, but he prefers the Villarreal project and we can assume safely, I believe, that those bids were not at the level of what Leeds previously offered.

Left without other suitors and with Jose Mourinho clearly not favoring the player in his plans, Spurs had to lower their asking price. They would have probably just sought a simple loan but they are now being linked with multiple CB options themselves, including Antonio Rudiger and Milan Skriniar. They have to bring in money to help offset those costs.

Because of this, it looks like Villarreal will be getting a talented young player at a reasonable fee. What’s even better is that we get an entire year of the player on loan to decide if we want to finalize the deal, so if he comes this year and is not up to par with La Liga play, we can decline our buy option and look somewhere else. Once again, being patient in the market is paying off for Villarreal