http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/aug/29/erik-lamela-tottenham-totti?commentpage=1
This time Tottenham did not take any chances. After seeing Willian slip through their fingers despite having already taken a medical in north London, the club made sure that there could be no repeat in Erik Lamela's case. It had been reported in Italy that the player would travel to England on Wednesday night before completing his transfer to Tottenham on Thursday. But before he had even left Italy, Roma published a statement confirming that Lamela had already been sold.
The deal will cost Tottenham €30m (£25.7m) up front, plus a further €5m in potential bonuses. That represents a tidy profit for Roma, who paid an initial €12m to procure the player from River Plate just two years ago. Both sides knew already that he was worth more, but the Argentinian club were in little position to negotiate after being relegated for the first time in their history.
Barcelona had tried to sign the player much sooner, approaching Lamela at 12 years old after seeing him dominate at a youth tournament in Spain. They offered his family a reported €120,000 per year to relocate to Barcelona, plus a further €8,000 in sponsorship money from Nike. But Lamela – and, crucially, his parents – preferred to stay put. He joined River Plate's academy after the club offered a high school scholarship to him and his brothers.
Back then he was a pint-sized prodigy, standing 5ft tall and weighing barely six-and-a-quarter stone. Scouts worried about whether he would grow strong enough to handle the rigours of the adult game, but even so they could not stop obsessing over his speed and close control. Those remain Lamela's defining traits, even though he now stands a lean but muscular 6ft 1in, weighing in at just over 11st.
Growing up he played more five-a-side football than anything else, and it is clear that this has had a formative impact on the way he plays the game. Few forwards can navigate their way through a packed defence more effectively. According to statistics from the website Whoscored.com, Lamela dribbled past opponents 99 times last season – the third-most of anyone in Serie A. Gareth Bale, for what it is worth, did so just 59 times in the Premier League.
Such numbers betray a selfish streak as well, and there is no question that Lamela is prone to holding on to the ball longer at times than he should. In his first season at Roma, his failure to pass the ball to team-mate Pablo Osvaldo more often during a defeat to Udinese led to a stand-up row in the changing rooms. The now Southampton striker was alleged to have slapped Lamela after being told: "Shut up, you're not Maradona." (That precise version of events was denied by the club, but the pair had certainly clashed.)
Indeed, Lamela's whole first season in Rome was frustrating. An ankle injury caused him to miss the start of the campaign and once he did appear the player tended to flit in and out of games. At his best, though, he was devastating – scoring five goals, including one on his debut against Palermo. Francesco Totti publicly stated that Lamela could become his heir.
The following season would serve to reinforce that belief. Appointed as manager in the summer of 2012, Zdenek Zeman sought to use Lamela in much the same way as he had deployed Totti during his first stint at the club in the late 1990s. Where Totti, a right-footer, had been placed on the left with freedom to drift inside, Lamela, very much left-footed, was lined up on the right of a three-man attack.
From there he could, and did, cut in to devastating effect, gliding past defenders and opening up his body to curl shots towards the far corner. Lamela would go on to score 15 goals in 33 league games, including a run at one point of six in consecutive matches. Only one Roma player, Rodolfo Volk, had ever got to seven in the club's history.
Roma fans thought that Lamela would spend his whole career there, and he did nothing to discourage that belief – stating after the team's defeat in the Coppa Italia final last May that he was "more determined than ever" to stay and succeed in Rome. That said, even he was taken aback by the intensity of the supporters' affections. "I met one fan who had my autograph tattooed on his arm," exclaimed Lamela in an interview with Sportweek this summer. "This is a little too much."
He might just earn similar levels of adulation at Tottenham if he can continue his sharp improvement. Still just 21, Lamela will be viewed as the natural heir to Bale, and like the Welshman is versatile enough to be used in different positions by the manager André Villas-Boas. He has stated that he is happiest playing as No10, and though he predominantly played out wide at Roma, he certainly has the skillset to move inside.
Lamela still has room for improvement, of course, and most notably in the defensive side of the game. He was lax at times in tracking back for Roma, and it will be up to Villas-Boas whether to demand more from him in that department or simply position in such a way that his responsibilities are reduced.
The raw materials are there, however, for Lamela to become a special player. "If Lamela doesn't turn into a champion it'll mean that I'm a donkey and I'll have to get a new job," said Roma's director of sport, Walter Sabatini, last year. Nobody has put a pair of floppy ears on the man just yet.
