Tottenham defender Benoit Assou-Ekotto has claimed that his club cannot sell Luka Modric and have aspirations to be a big team.
However, Assou-Ekotto wasn’t surprised Spurs managed to hold on to the Croat, despite receiving a £40million bid from Chelsea for the playermaker, as he feels the progress Spurs have made in recent years proves they have the ambition to keep hold of players like Modric:
“If this situation was five years ago . . . yeah, I would’ve been surprised,” he admitted to the London Evening Standard.
“But now you see Tottenham, they have a project to make a big team and if they want to be credible they cannot sell Modric to Chelsea and say ‘yeah but we still want to be a big team’.
“I understand him [Modric], though. Tottenham have a plan to become one of the great teams in England and the truth is Chelsea are already there so when you look at the money and what’s being offered, you can understand the temptation because one is an aspiration and one is already a reality.
And now the challenge for Tottenham is to be able to position themselves alongside the likes of Chelsea, so they must offer what Chelsea offer to attract big players and hold on to players.”
