Ranking The 30 Tottenham Transfers in the Daniel Levy Era
By Ryan Wrenn
#1 Best Transfer Rumor: Leandro Damião, Striker
Rumored transfer fee: £21 million
Former club: Internacional (Campeonato Brasileiro Série A)
Current club: Unattached
Current club stats: N/A
Leandro Damião haunted Tottenham transfer rumors for entirely too long. The then-Internacional man was purportedly on just about every major European club’s radar, but Tottenham had the initiative due to a rumored right-of-first-refusal deal made with the Brazilian club for its players.
At his height, Damião looked like he was worth the hype. He was scoring on the regular in Brazil and getting called up to the seleção. All it would take to get him to north London was for his fee to be negotiated.
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Unfortunately – or fortunately, but we’ll get to that in a second – the man doing the negotiating was Daniel Levy. The £21 million price tag was entirely too much. It would have been a record transfer fee for Tottenham, and considering it was being spent for a player who had never played outside of Brazil that was quite the ask. The rumors faded along with, supposedly, Tottenham’s interest.
Since then, Damião’s career hasn’t exactly blossomed. He never did make that move to Europe, instead moving to Santos FC then Cruzeiro. His game failed to improve with age and on December 10th of this year he was released entirely from professional football. Needless to say, Tottenham still doesn’t appear to be interested in Damião’s services these days, even if they came for free.