Fabrizio: Tottenham Hotspur have triggered Cristian Romero’s purchase option

Cristian Romero will soon be officially, and permanently, a Tottenham Hotspur player. Fabrizio Romano is reporting this evening that Spurs have triggered a £40m “obligation” to purchase Romero outright, confirming that his move to Spurs last summer was actually a loan with a purchase option.

When we wrote on the signing last summer, it was reported as a €50m (£42.5m) full signing, but apparently that wasn’t quite accurate — it appears as though it was instead one of Fabio Paratici’s classic loan-to-buy deals. Paratici loves those kind of deals, and in truth it made a bunch of sense for Spurs to do something like that at the time because the club was still coming out of the COVID-19 shutdown with a bit of financial instability, or at least a lack of liquidity in their finances.

And in digging around, former Carty Free writer Joel Wertheimer found this tweet from Alasdair Gold from last summer which seems to confirm that it was an initial loan with Romero signing a five year contract after signing on a permanent basis.

It’s a bit confusing here as to whether this is a purchase “option” or, as Romano says, a purchase “obligation.” The price, £40m, is also a touch lower than was reported last summer, though that could be down to currency fluctuations. I’d also guess that if this was a loan that Spurs probably paid a pretty hefty loan fee to Atalanta in order to get this over the line and what’s due now is the £40m minus whatever fee we paid.

But ultimately, that’s a distinction without a real difference — it’s been pretty clear for a while now that Spurs are thrilled with Romero’s production in their back line. Whatever Spurs paid, it was absolutely worth it for a player who established himself as one of the best defenders in the Premier League this season.

This is business that has already done, so it doesn’t FEEL like an important thing right now, but it’s absolutely a great piece of business.