Tottenham will not provide Ivan Rakitic an escape from Barcelona
Ivan Rakitic has the talent required to help a top Premier League club, but Tottenham don’t need a player of the Croatian’s ilk this summer.
Jose Mourinho has been an admirer or Ivan Rakitic for years. That doesn’t mean Tottenham are going to rescue the Croatian midfielder from his predicament at Barcelona this summer. He simply doesn’t fit the sort of midfield Spurs are building at the moment.
Mundo Deportivo is reporting that Tottenham are one of the European clubs interested in taking Rakitic on if Barcelona do decide to let him go. It’s obvious he isn’t in Ronald Koeman’s plans a the club. That does make it very likely that Rakitic will be playing his football somewhere else next season.
Would Ivan Rakitic make sense for Tottenham?
At first glance, the link between Tottenham and Rakitic does make some sense. Spurs have lacked a No. 10 capable of pulling the strings in their attacking midfield since selling Christian Eriksen last season. Rakitic is a player who could fill that void for Spurs immediately. The fact that he is already 32 years of age makes him a potential stopgap, at best, but it’s still conceivable that he could fill Eriksen’s role for another season or two.
That overlooks how much Tottenham’s midfield has changed since Eriksen’s departure. Spurs are no longer in the business of building a starting XI that dominates possession and needs to worry about splitting open opposing defenses that sit deep against them.
Instead, Spurs are now the side that are content to sit deep and terrorize opponents with counter-attacks of their own. Rakitic is poorly suited to do the sort of defending required to wrestle the ball away from Premier League midfielders before moving the ball on to his attacking teammates.
Ironically, Rakitic would have been a much more reasonable target for Tottenham if Mauricio Pochettino was still their manager. He might have been intrigued at the idea of adding another silky No. 10 to the club’s attacking options.
Next. Barcelona want Ronald Koeman to axe three big-name stars. dark
Mourinho isn’t a manager who wants a finesse player like Rakitic weighing down his midfield. Barcelona will need to look elsewhere to offload the high-priced Croatian this summer.