Barcelona Watching Tottenham Pair Closely

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On Tuesday night, Tottenham enjoyed their best away performance in the Champions League yet. The Estadio de Santiago Bernabeu admired the north London club’s willingness to attack and stoical defence.

There were some more interested observers than Real Madrid supporters. Barcelona sent scouts to watch the match, according to talkSPORT, with Harry Kane, 24, and Christian Eriksen, 25, their targets.

The Catalans are coming to a point in their squad cycle where key players need to be replaced. Neymar Jr, 26, left for PSG with Ousmane Dembele, 20, his replacement but Lionel Messi at 32 and Luis Suarez, 30, are close to the end of their Blaugrana careers.

The Tottenham pair, in their early to mid-twenties, are the perfect age for Barcelona and the Catalans are well aware that they can more than match any wage offer from the resurgent north London club.

Despite several seasons inside the top four of the English Premier League, Tottenham’s wage structure still holds the club back. There is genuine interest in manager Mauricio Pochettino from Europe’s elite clubs with suggestions earlier in the week that the Argentine is wanted by Real Madrid as a replacement for Zinedine Zidane when the French legend leaves.

These rumours bring huge headaches for Spurs chairman Daniel Levy. Knowing that the club is essentially self-funded, enormous transfer fees are tempting to accept, particularly when Kane alone might pay off one-quarter of the cost of White Hart Lane II himself. A £200m fee for the England captain is too much to turn down.

Similarly a fee around the £100m mark for Eriksen and Dele Alli, 21, is good business from a football finance point of view. However, selling star players isn’t going to appease a manager who is in demand nor entice fans to pay for season tickets.

As of yet, none of the key players has hinted at a move abroad but none has ruled it out. Tottenham are walking a fine line between reaching for the stars and oblivion.