Napoli close in on Tanguy Ndombele capture after offering Tottenham £1m loan fee with a £26m option to buy as Antonio Conte continutes to shape the Spurs squad in his image
- Tanguy Ndombele has failed to live up to his £55m price tag at Tottenham
- The Frenchman was almost immediately cast aside by Antonio Conte last year
- Spent the second half of last season on loan at Lyon in Ligue 1
Napoli are offering a £1m loan fee with a £26m option to buy for Tottenham midfielder Tanguy Ndombele.
The Italian club are confident of securing the player’s signature while the Frenchman is said to have told team-mates that he is bound for Campania.
Negotiations accelerated after Napoli’s opening weekend victory over Verona which settled some of the bubbling discontent in Naples this summer.
Tanguy Ndombele was one of four players that Antonio Conte banished from first team training this summer
The club have lost Kalidou Koulibaly to Chelsea, Dries Mertens to Galatasaray and Lorenzo Insigne to Toronto FC.
The three players formed the backbone of the Napoli team for a significant number of years and fans had grown to be unhappy with the club’s owner Aurelio De Laurentiis.
Ndombele, who was signed for big money and arrived with big expectation from Lyon in 2019, has failed rather spectacularly to live up to any of his promise that compelled Tottenham to spend £55m on him.
The Frenchman was one of four players banished from first team training by Antonio Conte this summer alongside Sergio Reguilon, Harry Winks and Giovani Lo Celso.
The midfielder was never fancied by Conte and leaves Tottenham having failed to live up to his promised ability
Last season the Frenchman played for half a season at Tottenham with his form proving patchy at best. However, after Antonio Conte arrived at the club it was clear his time was up, not being a midfielder that possessed enough dynamism to work in a Conte system.
Ndombele as a result was loaned out to Lyon where he enjoyed slightly more success but still struggled to maintain his fitness levels.
The midfielder will join Napoli and partner with former Fulham man André-Frank Zambo Anguissa and Stanislav Lobotka in midfield. Fabian Ruiz, Napoli’s midfielder who was courted by many of Europe’s biggest clubs, is bound for Paris Saint Germain.
The transfers of Ruiz and Ndombele are inextricably linked, with the Spaniard’s place in the squad going to the Frenchman.
Tottenham and Napoli have been able to swiftly move towards the conclusion of the deal owing to the close relationship of Fabio Paratici and Cristiano Giuntoli, the club’s respective sporting directors who have been friends for over 30 years.
Ndombele returned to his former club Lyon last season on loan from Tottenham from January