Xavi Simons has been on the wanted list for Premier League clubs for a decade. He was 12 years old with an eye-catching shock of blond hair and presence on the ball that belied his tender years when Chelsea first made their interest known.
The Blues were scouring the globe for elite academy talent at the time and Simons was a hot property having dazzled for Barcelona’s Under 12s at the La Liga Promises tournament in Miami.
Chelsea’s efforts were foiled when Simons opted to stay in Catalonia, then chose Paris Saint-Germain when he left at 16, and they were still firmly on his trail this summer as it emerged that Leipzig were open to offers for the Netherlands international forward.
It is Tottenham though who have struck a £51.8million deal to finally bring him to London and, albeit belatedly, extend Thomas Frank’s range of creative options from midfield and ease some of the frustration caused by missing out on Morgan Gibbs-White and Eberechi Eze.
Simons arrives at 22 as an established and experienced player. He is the sort of age Spurs are searching for, with scope to develop. And, while he might not boast Eze’s mercurial ability on the ball, he does have the eye for a pass and energy levels to suit Thomas Frank’s relentless style of play.
He competes with aggression and although slight in stature is certainly not a typical luxury playmaker. The Premier League’s high tempo and physicality should not present a problem for him.
Xavi Simons has been on the wanted list for Premier League clubs since he was 12 years old
Tottenham beat Chelsea to secure the 22-year-old’s signature for £51.8m from RB Leipzig
It is easy to see sliding into the No 10 position in the 4-2-3-1 formation Tottenham have deployed in the first two games of this Premier League season, where he will find himself in competition with Pape Matar Sarr or Lucas Bergvall.
Or operating from the left flank, where Brennan Johnson was the starter against Burnley and Manchester City, scoring in both games.
For either Johnson and Sarr to find their places under threat after starting well under Frank might seem unfair but it is all about depth for the Spurs boss, who wants options to flex tactically from one opponent to another and make changes from the bench within games.
‘It depends on the game and the other players around him,’ said Frank when asked in his pre-Bournemouth press briefing to describe the qualities he wanted in his No 10, before going on to explain that if the two deepest midfielders liked to go forward, then he might like his 10 to be more industrious than creative – but if his front three were very hard-working, he might be tempted to accommodate more flair in the 10.
‘I’m not looking at “what I want from the 10?” because what I want I don’t think it’s possible to get,’ Frank said. ‘Because he would be a running machine and a pressing machine, and unbelievably creative, some who can do headers, put it in the top corner and score a lot of tap-ins. That would be the perfect player and there are not too many of those players.
‘Modern football is much more flexible and the front three now need to play on the wing and as the striker.’
If it is a moving feast, then Simons will at least bring something different to the table.
He arrives, too, with something of a point still to prove because for all the hype about his wonderkid potential and exciting flourishes of promise during a season at PSV Eindhoven and during his first season on loan at Leipzig from PSG it has been a restless career.
Chelsea were interested in Simons when he impressed for Barcelona’s Under 12s at the La Liga Promises tournament in Miami
Xavi’s older brother Faustino (left) manages his affairs and has been integral to the move from Leipzig to Tottenham
Almost as if he has been searching for somewhere to consider home. He was born in Amsterdam, named after former Barcelona maestro Xavi Hernandez and moved to Alicante in the south of Spain when he was three years old, when his father’s career as a professional footballer ended.
Regillio Simons was a centre forward, best remembered in his native Netherlands for the first of his two spells at Fortuna Sittard, before becoming a respected youth development coach who worked in the Ajax academy.
Among his coaching roles at senior level was five months in charge of Volendam, the first club of Simons Jnr’s new team-mate Micky van de Ven.
There was a time when Regillio helped his son navigate football’s pitfalls. He took Xavi first into Villarreal’s youth system, where he was playing for the Under 9s at the age of six, and then moved him to Barcelona’s famed La Masia academy and fielded much of the attention when he was a 12-year-old in demand from clubs including Chelsea and Real Madrid.
These days, Xavi’s older brother Faustino manages his affairs and has been integral to the move from Leipzig to Tottenham. Simons becomes a third senior recruit of the summer, after Mohamed Kudus from West Ham and Joao Palhinha, initially on loan, from Bayern Munich.
Spurs will remain in the market ahead of the transfer deadline, still looking to improve the options in attack, but Frank revealed it was not a priority to reinforce in central defence, even though Luka Vuskovic is close to a loan move to Hamburg, and his club have been linked to the likes of Manuel Akanji of Manchester City. For now,Â
‘Not as it stands,’ said the Spurs boss when quizzed on another centre half amid links to Manuel Akanji of Manchester City. ‘We have right now three centre backs: Micky van de Ven, Cristian Romero and Kevin Danso.
‘Ben Davies can play there if necessary. We have Kota Takai, the young central defender we bought in the summer, who is now running and should be training with the team next week, then Radu Dragusin back in a couple of months so that should be enough.’
