One of the big questions that Tottenham Hotspur faces this summer when the transfer window opens is what to do with Mathys Tel. The French striker joined Spurs in January on loan from Bayern Munich with a purchase option of €50m, and while he’s been used somewhat sparingly, he was an important player during the mid-season injury crisis.
It seems pretty clear at this point that Tel is not in Bayern Munich’s plans going forward, but according to our good friend Florian Plettenberg, while Spurs are potentially interested in making the loan permanent they want to do so for less than his purchase option.
Tottenham Hotspur are happy with Mathys #Tel and are considering a permanent move for, but no final decision has been made yet. #THFC
Understand Spurs definitely want to renegotiate with FC Bayern and are not willing to activate the €50–55 million clause as a buy option.… pic.twitter.com/2TXPt3yIJD
— Florian Plettenberg (@Plettigoal) April 11, 2025
As annoyed as we were with good ol’ Plettigoal during the Harry Kane saga, he’s still basically the David Ornstein of German football. And this makes a lot of sense — Bayern are motivated to sell Tel, which gives some leverage to Spurs to re-negotiate his purchase price. Spurs have done this in the past, though the name of the player escapes me at the moment.
Postecoglou is reportedly still a fan, and even spoke about Tel in this morning’s press conference ahead of this Sunday’s trip to Wolverhampton Wanderers.
“Yeah, I mean don’t believe everything that comes out of German press. Any press really these days. I shouldn’t say press but just information in general. The days of it being double-checked, triple-checked, triple-sourced are long gone. No, Mathys is important for us. When he came in, people forget, he hadn’t played hardly at all at Bayern and we threw him in. He was playing game after game after game and it was always going to be a big ask for him, but that’s the challenge he had. Now we’re working with him at training, we really believe he can make an impact and physically he’s much better now. He’s in a much better place and he’s getting to understand our game a lot better, so we’ll keep working with him. I still think he’s an exciting talent and happy to have him.”
Now, some of this might be dependent on whether Ange Postecoglou is still manager at Tottenham Hotspur next season, but this feels correct to me. From what I’ve seen of Tel thus far I’d feel uneasy about spending €50m on him. Tel’s still a young guy and I think he has a decently high ceiling, but at the price being reported it’s a bit of a hard sell. But for a price like €35-40m? Well, that feels a lot better to me.
Who knows if this will happen yet, but it certainly seems like it COULD.