Tottenham took its offseason spending to more than $300 million by signing Italy midfielder Sandro Tonali from Newcastle for a reported club-record fee of 100 million pounds ($133 million) on Monday.
It's the second time in five days that Tottenham has broken its transfer record, having signed Mateus Fernandes from West Ham for 85 million pounds ($113 million) on Thursday.
Previously this summer, center backs Jan Paul van Hecke and Marco Senesi have already joined along with former Liverpool left back Andy Robertson, as recently hired Tottenham manager Roberto De Zerbi rebuilds a team that escaped relegation from the Premier League on the final day of last season.
Tottenham has finished in 17th place in the 20-team league in each of the last two seasons.
Tonali confirmed last week he was headed for Tottenham after a three-year spell with Newcastle that included a 10-month ban for his part in a betting scandal. He has established himself as one of the best midfielders in English soccer.
“People said about there being four or five clubs,” Tonali said in a Tottenham statement in a reference to reported interest in him, including from Manchester United. “There was only one.”
Tonali previously said the presence of De Zerbi — a fellow Italian — was a “huge” factor behind the move and that it also was a “lifestyle and family choice” following the birth of his son last year.
It's a spending spree unlike anything ever seen before by Tottenham, which has long trailed its big Premier League rivals in terms of outlay of players.
The departure last year of Daniel Levy, who was chairman for nearly 25 years and well known for keeping the team profitable and being pragmatic in the transfer market, appears to have changed things. Levy was accused by many Tottenham fans of chasing profits over silverware in failing to fully back some of the most high-profile managers in soccer that he employed in recent years, such as Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte.
Two straight humiliating Premier League campaigns has focused minds among the leadership at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, too, with chairman Peter Charrington writing in an open letter after last season that the club has “discovered some uncomfortable truths” and that “football success had not been driving our decisions.”
Charrington gave a five-point list of commitments to fans, including that the club “will invest across multiple transfer windows to rebuild, balance and strengthen” the team for De Zerbi, who was given a five-year deal when he joined.
It is staying true to its word.
Tottenham has also raised money over the past year by winning the Europa League in 2025 and reaching the round of 16 in the Champions League last season.
The sale of Tonali — for the second largest fee Newcastle had ever received for a player, after Alexander Isak to Liverpool last year — comes a day after the club signed Bazoumana Toure for a reported 43 million pounds ($57 million).
Toure, who has just exited the World Cup with the Ivory Coast, is a winger so appears to be a like-for-like replacement for Anthony Gordon. The England international joined Barcelona before the World Cup.
The 20-year-old Toure moves for more than five times the fee Hoffenheim paid Swedish club Hammarby for his services less than a year and a half ago. Last season, he scored five goals in the Bundesliga and had nine assists, the joint fourth-highest of any player.
AP Sports Writer James Ellingworth contributed to this story.
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
FILE - Italy's Sandro Tonali celebrates after scoring his side's first goal during the World Cup qualifying play-off soccer match between Italy and Northern Ireland, in Bergamo, Italy, Thursday, March 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni, File)
LONDON (AP) — The drama that seems to surround Prince Harry returns to the U.K. this week, and the previews already have the British press buzzing with anticipation.
King Charles III’s estranged son is traveling to the land of his birth for a series of charity engagements that begin Tuesday. But for most royal watchers that’s just background noise.
For the past 10 days, British tabloids and news broadcasts have been filled with speculation about whether Harry’s wife, Meghan, will accompany him and, more importantly, whether they will bring their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, so they can finally get to know Grandpa Charles. But everything is up in the air as Harry seeks to arrange protection for his family after a government committee refused to authorize taxpayer-funded security.
“With just days to go until Harry’s first public engagement in the UK on Tuesday … very little is guaranteed at all,” the Times of London reported on Saturday. “For Archie and Lilibet to meet the king, it’s now or never,’’ wrote the Telegraph.
Harry, a British army veteran who served in Afghanistan, is visiting to mark one year to go before for the Invictus Games, the Paralympic-style competition he founded to motivate and inspire military veterans around the world as they work to overcome battlefield injuries
Not on the official schedule but very much in the media spotlight, however, is a decision Tuesday at the High Court in London, where the judge will reveal his verdict in Harry’s invasion of privacy lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mail.
The decision about whether to bring the children, according to reports based on off-the-record briefings and unidentified people close to the royals, hinges on whether the U.K. government agrees to provide security for Harry and his family. It is an issue that has hung over every trip the prince has made to Britain since he and Meghan decamped to North America six years ago.
British authorities say Harry isn’t entitled to blanket protection because he is no longer a working member of the royal family and they will assess his security on a case-by-case basis, just like any other celebrity. Harry says it is unsafe for his children to travel to Britain without protection because his family remains a target simply by virtue of their royal status.
The decision rests with a government committee known as Ravec, that rules on who should get state-funded protection.
The outcome could be problematic for the royal family, which is trying to show that it provides value for money after months of embarrassing headlines about the links between the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the former Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
“In the paranoid atmosphere of waiting for more Andrew shoes to drop, Ravec and the royals themselves are terrified of public blowback if taxpayers are asked to fund protection for the House of Sussex,’’ royal commentator Tina Brown wrote on X. “The issue is not a hill that either the king or the government wants to die on, and who can blame them?’’
After initial reports that Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, would visit the U.K., plans began to wobble after the Daily Telegraph reported that Ravec had again rejected Harry’s request for protection.
The Times of London reported that Harry was “distraught” after the decision and told friends he wouldn’t let his children be “chased by paparazzi” through the streets of London.
By Sunday, it was clear the family wouldn’t accompany Harry when he arrives in the capital, though there was still a chance they would join him later in the trip.
Then on Monday, plans for the prince's accommodation fell into disarray. First there were reports that Harry would stay at Buckingham Palace while he is in London, but within an hour it became clear that the palace was not an option. At least for now.
Nonetheless, Harry has said that he wants to reconcile with his 77-year-old father, who is being treated for an undisclosed form of cancer. And he really wants his children, who first met the monarch during celebrations for the late Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022, to spend time with their grandfather now that they are old enough to remember the experience.
Tension within the House of Windsor have been strained ever since Harry and Meghan gave up royal duties and moved to California to pursue lucrative media deals free from the pressures of royal life in London.
They reached a new low after Harry published an explosive memoir that included unflattering depictions of the royal family and damning allegations of a toxic relationship between the monarchy and the press.
Harry’s description of royals leaking information about other members of the family in exchange for positive coverage of themselves is just one of the tawdry allegations in his book, “Spare.” The prince was especially scathing about Queen Camilla, accusing her of feeding private conversations to the media as she sought to rehabilitate her image, after her longtime affair with Charles when he was heir to the throne.
After losing a court battle over the security issue last year, Harry said he hoped to rebuild relations with his family, even as he suggested that the royals had sought to prevent him from receiving police protection to punish him for walking away from royal duties.
“I would love reconciliation with my family. There’s no point in continuing to fight anymore,” Harry told the BBC. “I don’t know how much longer my father has.”
FILE - Prince Harry, left, and his wife Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, arrive at a dock after sailing on the harbor in Sydney, Friday, April 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)
