Tottenham Hotspur are notoriously stingy on the transfer market because of chairman Daniel Levy, which is a big reason why Spurs supporters are still ardently pushing for the club's de facto leader to be pushed out the exit door.
Because of Levy, Spurs are expected to fill many of their slots for experienced players on free agents, and the club already seems to be closing in on a deal for Lille free agent midfielder Angel Gomes. But they've also been linked to a more expensive free agent target in winger Leroy Sane, who continues to squabble with Bayern Munich on a contract.
Sane seems more out than in at this point, and while that's a story we've seen so many times with Bayern stars only for them to re-sign in the end, Pini Zahavi has led a star out of Bavaria on more than one occasion.
Due to his close relationship with Levy, there's been increasing speculation that Sane could be a big-name free agent headed to Tottenham, and some reporting pinpointed to there being mutual interest between Spurs and Sane.
Leroy Sane is more likely to go to Arsenal than Tottenham
That no longer appears to be the case. According to the latest transfer update from BILD's Tobias Altschaffl, who has been all over this story in Germany, Sane isn't interested in going to Spurs. As relayed by iMiaSanMia, Sane is actually eyeing a different London-based outfit in bitter rivals Arsenal, but his most likely landing spots appear to be Galatasaray or Saudi Arabia with the winger reportedly in close talks with the Turkish giants.
All of that is to say that Sane prefers to stay with Bayern but isn't accepting a deal due to the financial terms of the offer from the Bundesliga powerhouse. Sane wants more money and could re-sign with Bayern if he doesn't get the contract he's looking for.
While on the surface and maybe to a casual fan Sane's lack of interest in Tottenham could be seen as a blow, it's honestly the best news Spurs fans could get in this case. In no way does Sane make any sense for Tottenham, and if signing him were to indeed come at the expense of keeping Mathys Tel either permanently or on another one-year loan spell, then it's all the better that Tottenham aren't signing him.
If anything, this may sound cynical, but it wouldn't be all that surprising if Zahavi and Levy were floating this idea around in the papers as a favor to the agent in order to get that last bit of cash out of Bayern this summer. We've seen Serge Gnabry and Alphonso Davies do similar with Real Madrid, because, in Sane's case, clubs like Barcelona and Real Madrid obviously aren't going to be interested in a declining 29-year-old winger who is clearly a backup player for Bayern.
Sane is a good footballer, but he isn't great, and the only team concretely interested in him in England is Arsenal, even if previous reporting out of Germany was mentioning Tottenham as that team. Only Arsenal, because of Mikel Arteta's relationship with Sane at Manchester City, would be interested in the German international as a free agent backup to Bukayo Saka and nothing more.
In the Tottenham case, nobody seriously thinks that Spurs are going to pay Sane's wages and Zahavi's hefty commission. Tottenham don't pay players high wages, as Levy looks to do everything to avoid that. Sane to Tottenham clearly isn't happening now, and it's better for Spurs that it doesn't.