Spurs paid 12.5 million for Djed Spence, and Inter are paying up to 30 million four years on

Djed Spence landed in Milan late on Thursday night and was booked in for an Inter medical the next morning, which is usually the point where a transfer stops being a rumour. Tottenham have agreed to sell him for an initial 31.5 million euros, around 27 million pounds, with performance add-ons that would take the package to 35 million euros. They have kept a 10 per cent sell-on clause for whenever Inter decide to move him on.

The maths works nicely for Tottenham

Spurs paid Middlesbrough 12.5 million pounds for Spence in July 2022, with a further 7.5 million in add-ons that could have taken it to 20 million. Four years later they are banking roughly double the money they handed over, on a player who had spent chunks of that spell out on loan.

The timing helps too. Tottenham have spent more than 235 million pounds this summer, a club record, and a 27 million credit reads differently on that balance sheet than it would in a quiet window.

He is not leaving because he played badly

Pedro Porro signed a new deal this summer that runs to 2031 with an option for another year, which answers the right-back question for the rest of Spence’s likely peak. Andy Robertson came in on a free to cover the left. Roberto De Zerbi, who took the job in March with Spurs a point clear of the relegation places and kept them up, approved the sale.

Spence made 85 senior appearances for Tottenham across four seasons, a number that says everything about how long it took him to convince anyone at the club. He finally did, and now he is going.

The World Cup set his price

Spence went to the World Cup with England and came home with a third-place medal after the 6-4 win over France in Miami on 18 July. That is a strange sentence to write about a player who had been capped for the first time only ten months earlier, off the bench for Reece James in the 69th minute of a 5-0 qualifying win in Belgrade on 9 September 2025. He became the first Muslim player to be capped by England that night.

Ten months from a debut cap to a World Cup third-place playoff to a 30 million pound move to Inter is a run most players do not get in a career.

Inter have been chasing this problem all summer

Denzel Dumfries left for Real Madrid and Inter have been looking for a right wing-back ever since. Moussa Diaby at Al-Ittihad was the plan for a while, and it stalled on valuation and wages, the two things Saudi negotiations usually stall on. Inter will insist Spence was not a consolation pick and that they rated him higher for the physical side of the role anyway. Clubs always say that about the player they end up with. In this case the World Cup tape happens to back it up.

Serie A starts on 23 August, so Inter want him in the building this week rather than next. The window closes on 1 September.

Keep up with the summer window