Lately, transfer fees have been back on the rise, and Tottenham Hotspur fans have seen that on a personal level, as they watched their beloved club spend nearly 250 million pounds combined on the trio of Sandro Tonali, Mateus Fernandes, and Jan Paul van Hecke this summer transfer window.
Even so, Spurs had to settle for selling star center back Cristian Romero, who is one of the biggest names at the position in world football, for just 40 million euros to Atletico Madrid with no club willing to even entertain the idea of spending more. Inter Milan were the only other club as interested in Romero as Atleti, and they were not going to budge even up to the 40 million euro mark.
While it seems deeply upsetting for Romero to only go for 40 million euros when Tottenham fans were expecting a bigger cash windfall for the 28 year old center back, those words are precisely the reason why Spurs fans should not actually be too surprised to see the final transfer fee for Romero. Because, well, he is a 28 year old center back coming off a pretty dreadful season in which he captained a team that nearly got relegated and actually played even better and survived without him. The World Cup performance with Argentina didn't necessarily augment his value; it actually saved it and probably was the thing that made clubs like Atleti and Inter even still want him in the first place.
Cristian Romero never actually merited a massive fee
Because the reality is that center backs Romero's age don't generally go for this much money. The most expensive center back transfer in history at the age of 28 or older was Lilian Thuram, and there are only three center backs above the age of 25 who have gone for more than 40 million euros. Sure, era and inflation need to be accounted for, but 40 million euros for a 28 year old Cristian Romero coming off a down year were about all that Tottenham could have hoped for.
Fans often overvalue their own players or overestimate them due to familiarity, not realizing that their own negative feelings about a player are likely shared by outside clubs, even those that are still fans of the positives as Atletico Madrid and Diego Simeone clearly are with their new Argentinian central defender.
Romero was not a gross lowball sale by Tottenham. They had no leverage, everyone knew they had to sell, and they got a pretty historically strong deal for a player who will have absolutely zero resale value by the time he winds his contract down half way with Atletico.
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