All indications are that Tottenham Hotspur are likely to sell Hugo Lloris in this coming offseason. The Spurs captain is 34 and is one of the longest tenured members of the current first team, but his contract expires in 2022 and he’s reportedly declined the opportunity to negotiate an extension.
If accurate, that opens up a pretty critical hole in Spurs’ roster this summer. According to French daily L’Equipe (via GetFrenchFootball), one option Spurs are considering to fill that hole is another Frenchman — Lille keeper Mike Maignan.
It’d be a pretty good choice. Maignan, 25, is considered one of the best up and coming keepers in Europe, and he’s probably ready for a new challenge. His FBref statistics look pretty good, relying on good positioning to make stops as opposed to acrobatic saves, which compares him favorably to established keepers such as Dean Henderson, Alphonse Areola, and Nick Pope, all three of which are supposedly also on Spurs’ radar.
Spurs taking a long look at a Lille player certainly isn’t unique as Jose Mourinho poached assistant coach Joao Sacramento from there when he took the job, and he’s no doubt very familiar with Maignan and the way he plays. Replacing Hugo wouldn’t be cheap, of course, but L’Equipe suggests it might cost somewhere around €25m for a deal... which frankly isn’t bad. The downside is you’re replacing a foreign player with another foreign player instead of a domestic one, but that’s an area that can be made up elsewhere.
Hugo, meanwhile, has been linked with a number of other clubs, including PSG where he’d reunite with Mauricio Pochettino, his old club Nice, and even (according to L’Equipe) Manchester United.
Henderson and Pope are known commodities and would likely cost more than Maignan, and quite frankly it’d be kind of neat to have a French keeper named Mike. We’d just have to figure out if it’s pronounced “Meek” because French.