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Jose Mourinho wants Christian Eriksen and Jan Vertonghen to follow Toby Alderweireld in signing new contracts at Tottenham.
Alderweireld ended two years of stalemate on Friday when he finally signed a deal that keeps him at the club until 2023.
It had looked as though the Belgium international was going to leave the club as talks reached an impasse under former boss Mauricio Pochettino, but the arrival of Mourinho has changed the landscape.
Extremely happy and honored to sign a new deal at @SpursOfficial . I would like to thank everyone at the club, the staff, my team mates, all the wonderful supporters and of course my family for the support on and off the pitch. I’m really excited for the future. 💪🏻 #COYS pic.twitter.com/8eiEnBwJCB — Alderweireld Toby (@AlderweireldTob) December 20, 2019
Eriksen and Vertonghen have also been stalling on new contracts, with both able to discuss deals with European clubs in 12 days.
The prospect of persuading Eriksen to stay looks unlikely as the Dane is reported to have told Mourinho he has no intention of signing, while the Portuguese has hinted that Vertonghen’s agent is making a deal difficult.
“The only thing I will tell you about Christian is that I would like him to sign a new contract. Apart from that I’m not going to tell you anything,” Mourinho said.
On Vertonghen, Spurs boss added: “I think a player will sign a contract when the club wants – I am the club, Mr (Daniel) Levy is the club – when the player wants, when the family wants, when the agent wants.
“If one of these parts doesn’t want it is very difficult to make it happen unless the player changes agent and gets an agent who also wants.”
Mourinho, when talking about Alderweireld’s negotiations, again suggested that agents are causing him problems.
He added: “Player happy, club happy and now in football, in this moment now, there are some people that it looks like they are more important sometimes than players and then the clubs, and these people they are very important sometimes in decisions, in solutions.
“And in this case the family and the agents were happy to make the player happy. So it was easy.”
Mourinho is widely credited with getting Alderweireld’s deal over the line as he made it clear from his arrival that the Belgian was a player he wanted.
“The club’s objectives are exactly the same objectives as mine,” he said. “To be more objective in this moment we are the club. I am the club.
“We want Toby, Toby wants us, the people that works with him were happy to make happen what the player wants, so it was not difficult.
“The statement for me was the beautiful, simple: ‘I couldn’t be happier in another place’. So if he couldn’t be happier in another place, be happy.”
