Joe Lewis & Florentino Perez ‘Verbally Agree’ €120m Bale Deal During Secret USA Talks

With the summer transfer window now open, there is plenty of gossip doing the rounds in the newspapers so we’ll keep you up-to-date with the latest transfer rumours. Today, more on Gareth Bale’s proposed move to Real Madrid.

Tottenham owner Joe Lewis is understood to have held secret face-to-face talks with Real Madrid president Florentino Perez in the United States on Sunday where they verbally agreed a €120m deal for Gareth Bale, according to reports in Spain.

AS claim that following on from initial negotiations last week, Lewis and Perez met in the US over the weekend where the Madrid supremo hoped to strike a deal that would see them pay a large sum plus include Fabio Coentrao or Angel Di Maria in a player-plus-cash exchange for Bale.

However, the Spanish publication suggest that Lewis demanded a straight cash deal and the two men eventually made a verbal agreement of €120m – which would smash the current world record of €100m that Madrid paid Manchester United for Cristiano Ronaldo – with Madrid paying just €20m up front and the remainder paid over the next six years.

This news comes as the Mirror report that Spurs are ready to fine Bale if he refuses to return to training on Tuesday with the 24-year-old believed to be back in Wales after not making the trip to play Monaco on Saturday.

The newspaper claims that Bale is “unhappy and disappointed” at comments made by boss Andre Villas-Boas’s after the game that suggested the player wouldn’t be sold to Madrid this summer.

With less than a month left until the summer transfer window slams shut and less than two weeks until the Premier League season starts, things are going to have to start moving if Bale is going to make the switch to the Bernabeu. AS claim the two clubs have verbally agreed a fee just 24 hours after AVB insisted the player wasn’t for sale, so it’s difficult to know what to believe.

One things for sure, it’s going to be a tense few weeks for Spurs fans as they face losing a star player to Real Madrid for the second consecutive summer.

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