He must’ve been desperate to leave
Tanguy Ndombele agreed to ‘pay part of his own wage’ in order to complete a deadline day move to French side Lyon from Tottenham Hotspur.
Ndombele rejoined the club he left to sign for Spurs in 2019 after falling out of favour under successive managers, and largely struggling to replicate the form that made the North London club pay £54m for him.
Lyon opted to bring the midfielder back to the Groupama Stadium for a reported loan fee of £1.2m with the option to make the deal permanent in the summer for £54m.
But according to L’Equipe, Ndombele was so desperate to leave Tottenham that he agreed to pay the difference in salary between what his parent club wanted and what Lyon were willing to pay.
Lyon director director of football Vincent Ponsot heaped praise on Ndombele for his determination to get the deal completed.
😁 @TanguyNdombele making us smile like it's 2019 all over again! 🦁 pic.twitter.com/cNiXfP7y1z
— Olympique Lyonnais 🇬🇧🇺🇸 (@OL_English) January 31, 2022
He said: “It is a loan with loan indemnity, which is based on the partial support of the capital part of the transfer.
“But above all, on the part of Tanguy, there were not only words. He was decisive and it is very rare in this area. He is one of the players who is not economically accessible, but he did everything to be [here].
“Often, we have words without the facts on the contracts. We did our part, we needed a supplement and he was the one who provided it. There, there were facts in front of words.”
Ndombele himself also explained his decision to leave Spurs – citing the constant change in manager as the reason behind his struggles.
“I had 5 different managers at Tottenham. I needed something else,” the Frenchman said.
Ndombele could have reunited with one of those managers – Mauricio Pochettino, who signed the midfielder – at Paris Saint-Germain, however PSG were unable to offload one of their midfielders to make room for him in the squad.
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