Leicester City have gone head-to-to head with Tottenham Hotspur in an attempt to sign Spain under-21 international Sandro. Direct rivals for a Champions League place, both clubs have opened negotiations for the 20-year-old striker, who has a €12million (£9.1m) release clause in his Barcelona contract.
Sandro has made sporadic appearances for Barca over the last two seasons as a backup to the European champions' first-choice attack of Lionel Messi-Luis Suarez-Neymar, scoring during that successful Champions League campaign. Tottenham, whose head of recruitment Paul Mitchell is understood to have travelled to the Catalan capital this weekend, regard the forward as a badly needed backup to Harry Kane, and as a talent who could be developed into an elite Premier League player over time.
With Sandro's contract due to expire in the summer of 2017, Barca are likely to accept a fee lower than his release clause in return for a buyback option specifically designed to prevent the La Masia product falling into the hands of Real Madrid in future years.
A similar “paranoia” clause was inserted in the initial €10m (now £7.7m) sale of Adama Traore to Aston Villa last summer, entitling Barca to re-recruit the midfielder for the entire cost of Villa's expenditure on Adama, including transfer fee, salary, taxes and agents' fees. Whether such an arrangement would prove acceptable to Tottenham's famously profit-oriented chairman, Daniel Levy, is open to question.
