Transfer sagas. We do them better than anyone. During the duration of the deal that appears to have taken Sandro from Internacional to White Hart Lane (pending medical and the dreaded work permit) we've done little talking out in the open. Other than Harry's rehearsed sound-bites to questions from the media about how he thinks 'the chairman' is working away at it, we've not given much away. It's been impressive from our side. No need to be in the know until everyone is made to know.
All the hullabaloo that has kept the guessing at Richter scale 8.0 has come out of Brazil (not quite epic - that honour belongs to The Sock aka Diego who hit around 10.0) with the deal - on the surface - yo-yo'ing from collapse to maybe from one week to the next. I even got distracted with suggestions that Real Madrid were sniffing around, which is believable considering the noise made was loud enough to attract their limitless pot of money and acquisition greed. That and someone saw some documents, but let's not talk about that.
As per usual we all take every written word as variants of gospel. Sort of. Not always believing it to be factual but still deeming it worth of commentary and making assumptions based on the half-truths (gospel) in the aftermath.
Politics, deflection, mis-quotes, lies, guesswork…whatever you want to tag them as, you never quite knew how far-gone the progress of signing this young rough diamond midfield player was because of all the hype. I'm sure a representative from Internacional (or was it their chairman, I forget?) suggested that the clubs partnership (to loan players to us) was not even finalised. There was always a lopsided viewpoint which for the rest of us translated as: This is a difficult transfer. Even the player got involved and in the end the clue was in the statement about learning English in preparation for a possible move. The words 'done' and 'dusted' finally whispered quietly for the first time.
All very colourful and erratic. Which is what you come to expect from the boys from Brazil. Regardless of how we've got here. We are here. And if you strip away all the message board discussions and red top twist and turns, you might find yourself believing that this deal wasn't as tricky as it looked.
We showed interested. We signed him. Months later, but still, signed.
73 appearances for his club. Three goals. And one full international cap (and has captained the Brazilian U-20 side). I've not seen enough of him to form a true opinion. I'm sure most of you are in the same boat, and tbh, when it comes to players from abroad there is always a risk element, mostly around adapting to the culture and EPL. And the types of Brazilians who travel over here are never the sexy types. But then we don't want that. What we need is more steel.
So, who is Sandro?
He's young. He's athletic, very strong but perhaps not the best passer - so they say. We wanted an understudy for Palacios - we've got one. Uncanny. And to bring in a player of this ilk means that he must have some potential because we're going to have to be patient (look up the word in a dictionary) for him to bed in. Unless his mental strength and confidence is such, that he will be happy to be thrown into the deep end and come to terms with English football quickly.
Does give us options in the middle now, and quite possibly spells the end of Jenas. Yes - JJ is a different type of player (not sure what type he is - I'll let you know the day he reaches his potential) but with Huddlestone, Palacios, Modric and now Sandro - we have enough in the middle to swagger it up even more than usual. New cult hero in our ranks?
/prays
The more cynical amongst us might think this deal is part of the relationship we have with Internacional and them loaning youth players to us in preparation for any potential move they make to Europe. Is this a sweetener? A long term deal? Does the player see the next five years of his career at Spurs? Does his former club get any % of any future transfer?
The even more cynical amongst us would go one further and question why the likes of Kleberson, Denilson and Lucas are supposedly ahead of him in the defensive midfield pecking order for his country.
Where's that dictionary?
Talking of cult heroes check out Spurs' Cult Heroes - the first published book from All Action No Plot blogger and writer Michael Lacquiere. I'll give it a proper review when I get my copy delivered. Be sure to check it out anyway, available from the Spurs official site, WHSmith, Amazon, Tesco, Waterstones and Play…to name a few. Shop around.
Blanchflower, Mackay, Jones, Chivers, Gilzean, Jennings, Hoddle, Perryman, Greaves, Mabbut, Ginola, Nicholson, Gazza…list is endless. Well, it's not exactly endless because he'd never have been able to get the book out, but its jam-packed with legends.
Will be giving away a copy soon. Stay tuned.