Benfica have confirmed an agreement is in place with Tottenham Hotspur for the transfer of Brazilian forward Carlos Vinicius, who will initially make the switch to north London on loan.
Vinicius only joined Benfica last summer, having spent the previous season on loan at Rio Ave and Monaco from Napoli, but he enjoyed a breakout campaign, scoring 24 times in all competitions.
Spurs will pay an initial €3m (£2.7m) to Benfica to secure the season-long loan, with the deal including a further option to buy for a total price of €45m (£40.9m) next summer.
Should the Premier League club decide to trigger that clause, the initial loan fee will be deducted from the fee, making it a further payment of €42m (£38.2m) instead.
Vinicius is the second player Spurs have signed from Benfica since Jose Mourinho was appointed manager last November, with Gedson Fernandes currently partway through an 18-month loan.
At 25, Vinicius could be considered a late bloomer. He was contracted to lower league Brazilian club Cadense as recently as 2017, until getting a chance on loan in Portugal’s second tier with Real SC.
That spell yielded 20 goals in all competitions, prompting Napoli to take a €4m gamble on him in the summer of 2018. He never actually played a game for the Italian club, joining the aforementioned Rio Ave and Monaco on loan, but Benfica then came in for him at €17m last summer.
Mourinho had been targeting a striker before the transfer deadline on 5 October, with Harry Kane still the club’s only recognised ‘number nine’. That situation was made more desperate when Son Heung-min, who can fill in for Kane, suffered a hamstring injury last week.
Vinicius will be Spurs’ sixth signing of the summer overall, following the existing arrivals of Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, Joe Hart, Matt Doherty, Sergio Reguilon and returning hero Gareth Bale.
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Source : 90min