Dembélé type Barrios a good fit for Spurs (Tracking Video)

Dembélé type Barrios a good fit for Spurs

Transfer Talk - Wilmar Barrios

It is certainly good news to hear of our agreement in place to sign 24-year-old (25 in October) Colombian international Wilmar Barrios. he is already following the club on Twitter, however, he also follows Manchester City, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Barcelona.

I look at things through the eyes of a coach. A fan watches a game to enjoy it and forms opinions based on that, a coach will look at different things. I often watch a game twice, once as a fan and once as a coach. As a coach I'll look off the ball,

I concentrate on shape, movement, anticipation, I look where a mistake originates, the root cause. The root cause might be a totally different player than the one who eventually makes the mistake, stop the root cause and the mistake doesn't happen. Stop a mistake and it will likely occur again when under pressure, stop a root cause and it won't.

Looking through the eyes of a coach, I advocated creating a young team who stay together and grow each season playing a set system throughout the club and low and behold that is what we now have. I advocated buying Eric Dier, regularly for 2 years before we signed him and cast an eye of Wilmar Barrios whom  I wrote about on 20 May believing him to be an ideal replacement for Mousa Dembélé.

I see what is happening financially at the club, the £98.5 million increase in revenue until June 2017 and the undoubted increase since then. That is fuelling the change in our wage structure, not a dismantling, we will conduct those matters in the same way, just with greater sums of money, money we simply didn't have before.

We are after the young talent in Europe that everyone else is after, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, PSG, Juventus, all the top clubs around Europe.

Another recommendation was that we scour the Spanish market as they have technically gifted players who are taught right from a young age that the team is the most important thing and to play passing football, it is ingrained in them from childhood.

I still feel forming an association with a Spanish club or someone like Ajax to be an option for our youngsters coming through. The other market I suggested we should scour is South America.

Bargains are available on the continent, the game doesn't have money there, but it is a difficult market to deal in with third-party ownership, despite that being illegal. You don't just negotiate with a player and his agent, but his family and club, whose season runs at a different time to ours, thus they like to keep their players until December, which is when their contracts run out (ours run out 30 June).


South American players come to Europe, often with Italian passports, to make their name, make money and then return home at the end of their careers. Once in Europe, they can be sold on for a huge profit, Diego Forlan, Diego Costa being two examples.

If the reports in South America, which originate from Radio Miter in Argentina I believe and then broadcast by others, are correct, he is a player Mauricio Pochettino has identified Wilmar Barrios and asked Daniel Levy to buy. A first choice player, not a cheaper option as some anti-Levy folk will no doubt try to portray it.

In my view he is an excellent player and a very good signing. He will have to adapt to our football but he has all the attributes to do so.

Pochettino dispatched a scout to Craven Cottage to see Wilmar Barrios in action for Colombia against Australia in a pre-Worl Cup warm-up game. He stood out in that game by all accounts. He reads the game well, is an excellent tackler and comfortable on the ball.

He has a £12.05 million (€10.37m - $16m) release clause and we have arranged to activate this and sign the player after the World Cup. The original report gives his release clause in dollars, not euros, as is generally being reported elsewhere.

I also see a suggestion that he has signed a new contract, but we are allowed to sign him at the old release clause, it was to have been raised. As per my article of 20 May, he has not signed a new contract and knowing our interest, was not going to. I concluded that article by saying that this is a connection to a player that we must take seriously.

 The video in there and subsequent videos I have viewed show him to be a very good player that I think could be a big hit at Tottenham. France Football named him as one of their 10 lesser known players to watch at the World Cup, Jordan Pickford being another.

Agreements are all in place. As he does, Mauricio Pochettino contacted Barios personally to put the Tottenham project to him and ask him to come to England and be a part of it.

Barros Schelotto, his manager at Boca Juniors has acknowledged to the press (Ole.com) that Barrios was offered a new contract but that he hasn't signed it, obviously, he is hopeful he will citing the fact that Barrios is grateful to Boca Juniors.

They asked him about Tottenham and he replied that he is only concentrating on Japan right now.

He has missed training with Colombia with a  thigh muscle injury but is back with the group. Colombia start their World Cup campaign with a game against Japan at 1pm on Tuesday.

"The truth is that today I joined the group again, I did normal work with the whole group, I went with a bit of fatigue and could not train as a precaution, I did work in the gym but it's normal for that to happen when you do a high-intensity workout. "

Have a look at the video below that tracks him during a game.

I'll release an article tonight at 8pm on what this signing could mean for Eric Dier.

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