Verified as real — this one checks out across BBC, Romano/GiveMeSport, Ornstein and Yahoo. Fee reporting varies (£75m initial, rising to ~£85m with add-ons), so I’ve written it that way.
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Tottenham Hotspur have agreed a deal worth an initial £75m with Manchester City for Brazil winger Savinho, a transfer that would break Spurs’ club transfer record and hand City the biggest sale in their history.
The 22-year-old, whose full name is Sávio Moreira de Oliveira, has been granted permission to travel to north London for a medical, with add-ons reported to take the total package towards £85m. Tottenham are now racing the clock to register him before Saturday’s Premier League opener at Brentford.
Savinho was left out of City’s squad entirely for the 3-0 Community Shield defeat by Arsenal on 17 August — a decision that told its own story about where the Brazilian sits in Enzo Maresca’s plans, five weeks into the Italian’s reign at the Etihad.
City’s record sale, and what it says about Maresca
If completed at the reported figures, the deal comfortably eclipses the £64m City received from Atlético Madrid for Julián Álvarez in 2024 — until now the largest fee the club had ever banked for a player.
That is a striking outcome for a footballer City valued at roughly £30.8m when they brought him to Manchester in July 2024, having parked him within the City Football Group network at Troyes and PSV Eindhoven before a breakout loan at Girona. In Catalonia he produced nine goals and 10 assists in 37 matches and completed more dribbles than anyone else in La Liga.
What followed at City was less emphatic. Savinho has scored twice in 53 appearances across two seasons, and his second campaign shrank badly: five Premier League starts and 12 substitute outings, no goals and a single assist, plus 371 minutes across seven Champions League games. He started 14 matches in all competitions last season, down from 33 the year before.
Pep Guardiola, who left in June after 10 years and 20 trophies, called him “an extraordinary player” but repeatedly pointed to his positioning in the final third. Maresca — appointed on 29 June on a three-year deal, with City paying Chelsea around £17m in compensation — has arrived with his own template and appears willing to convert an underused asset into a nine-figure war chest.
A £450m rebuild at a club that nearly went down
The buyer is the story here as much as the seller. Fifteen months ago Tottenham were a Champions League club. Last season they finished 17th for the second year running, surviving on the final day with a 1-0 win over Everton and ending two points clear of West Ham United — the closest they have come to relegation in almost half a century.
Thomas Frank was sacked on 11 February, Igor Tudor lasted six weeks as interim, and Roberto De Zerbi arrived on 31 March on a five-year contract to keep them up. He has been backed with a summer that borders on the extraordinary:
- Martin Dubravka, goalkeeper
- Andy Robertson, Marcos Senesi and Jan Paul van Hecke, defenders
- Mateus Fernandes and Sandro Tonali, midfielders
That is six players and more than £200m before Savinho, who would become the seventh. Spurs remain in talks with City over striker Omar Marmoush — David Ornstein reported a willingness to commit around £150m in total, bonuses included, for the pair — and continue to pursue Liverpool’s Cody Gakpo. Complete all three and Tottenham’s outlay this window pushes past £450m.
De Zerbi said earlier this month that only about 60% of the club’s business was done. Few believed him at the time.
What Savinho actually gives De Zerbi
De Zerbi’s teams live on wide players who can hold width, receive under pressure and beat a man — the mechanism that made Brighton so difficult to press and that he tried to rebuild at Marseille. Savinho fits that brief more neatly than his goal return suggests.
Even during a stripped-back season, his underlying numbers stayed strong: he rated well above average for crosses, shot involvement and chance creation per minute. The problem at City was never whether he could produce the action; it was how often he was on the pitch to produce it, and how rarely those actions ended in a goal.
He is also a Brazil international with 13 caps and a Copa América behind him, at an age where a first genuinely permanent role could reshape his career. Spurs are not buying a finished product. They are buying the version of Savinho that terrorised La Liga defences at 19.
The risk sits in the price
And that is the gamble. One valuation model has Savinho’s estimated transfer value at roughly €44.9m today, down about 40% from a career high of €74.8m 18 months ago. Tottenham are paying close to double that on the basis of a ceiling rather than a record.
For a club that has just spent two seasons in the bottom four and appointed three head coaches in 14 months, the logic is aggressive: buy talent City no longer has room for, buy it before the market reprices it upward, and give De Zerbi a squad capable of skipping the rebuilding year entirely.
If it works, Spurs have their most exciting wide player since Son Heung-min’s peak. If it does not, £75m of a £450m summer will have been spent on two Premier League goals and a hunch.
Ahmad Ali is Sports Editor at SportsPortal.net.
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~830 words.
Sources: [GiveMeSport (Romano, £75m)](https://www.givemesport.com/tottenham-agree-deal-savinho-75m-transfer-man-city-here-we-go/) · [GiveMeSport (£86m total)](https://www.givemesport.com/tottenham-agree-86m-savinho-transfer-fee-man-city/) · [Yahoo Sports (€99m, record sale)](https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/tottenham-agreed-99m-deal-manchester-133000169.html) · [FootballTransfers (valuation analysis)](https://www.footballtransfers.com/en/transfer-news/uk-premier-league/2026/08/savinho-to-tottenham-is-man-citys-eur100m-price-tag-worth-it) · [Football365 (Ornstein, £450m spend)](https://www.football365.com/news/tottenham-spend-over-450m-cody-gakpo-savinho-omar-marmoush-david-ornstein-fabrizio-romano-updates) · [Al Jazeera (Maresca appointment)](https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/2026/6/29/enzo-maresca-appointed-man-city-manager-to-succeed-pep-guardiola) · [Wikipedia (2025-26 Spurs season)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%9326_Tottenham_Hotspur_F.C._season) · [Wikipedia (Savinho)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savinho)
Two things I deliberately hedged rather than asserted: the total package (reports range £75m initial to £85-86m/€99m all-in) and the club-record claim for Spurs, which £75m clears against any previously reported Tottenham fee. The deal was not officially announced by either club at the time of writing.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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