Cristian Romero is a valuable member of the Tottenham team, but there is an argument they should consider selling him to help fund a summer rebuild.
So much about Cristian Romero is so erratic that perhaps his error in the defeat at Wolves shouldn’t have been much of a surprise.
The Premier League has come to know the Argentina international, a senior Tottenham player and captain on Sunday in the absence of Son Heung-min, as a consistent loose cannon. Controversy and drama have followed him around the pitch like a shadow over his years in London.
But historically, discipline has always been his biggest problem: yellow cards for silly, petty acts, and reds often at vital times for rash and unnecessary challenges. At Molineux on Sunday, however, he was caught in possession deep in his own half by Wolves left-back Rayan Aït-Nouri, who squared for Jørgen Strand Larsen to score.
It was a desperately poor and wholly avoidable error, and the circumstances and timing of the goal only exacerbated the feeling of catastrophe. Mathys Tel had less than five minutes earlier halved Wolves’ lead, making it 2-1, and just when Spurs had a chance to find an unlikely route back into the game, Romero contrived to single-handedly allow the opposition to reinstate the two-goal cushion they had just lost.
However, on-ball mistakes as glaring as this one aren’t generally the kind of thing Romero is guilty of making. In his 98 Premier League appearances (96 starts) before Sunday’s game, he had made only two errors directly leading to an opposition goal, and not even a single one since October 2022.
But there have been other mistakes – those that don’t count as directly leading to an opposition goal – that mean some fans may have started to feel frustrated with the Argentine.
Romero charging around out of position, pressing like a maniac high up the pitch is an unnervingly common sight given he is meant to be a central defender and a leader, and while there are times when it pays off – like in last season’s home north London derby, when he intercepted a David Raya pass to score – there are also occasions when it doesn’t help. He can be like a moth to a flame in his desperation to win possession and impact the game, drawn towards the ball in the hope of winning it back as soon as possible, only to leave a big gap in the middle of the defence.
At Newcastle last September, Romero ran out of defence and failed to get back into position after the ball had gone out for a throw-in, meaning the number six that day, Yves Bissouma, had to cover for him. Moments later, Harves Barnes scored from a cut-back to a position just in front of the defence – precisely the area that Bissouma should have been covering.
Later in the game, he chose to hold his position as Joelinton lined up a through ball, opening a huge space for Jacob Murphy to race through and set up Alexander Isak for the winner. His poor decision-making can have terrible consequences for his team.
There have been fewer rash challenges, at least. Romero has been praised this season for avoiding fouls and reducing the frequency of silly cards. He is committing 0.8 fouls per 90 in Premier League games this season – the lowest rate of his career and half his rate in 2022-23 with Spurs (1.6 per 90). It is also under a third of the number of fouls he was making in his final season at Atalanta (2.5 per 90).
In that sense, it’s reasonable to argue that Romero is maturing. One of Spurs manager Ange Postecoglou’s vice-captains, he has clearly worked hard to subdue the urge to fly into his opponents in the era of VAR.
Earlier in his Tottenham career, he was guilty of fouls at costly times in dangerous positions in big games, most notably with his side 1-0 up in November 2023’s now-infamous defeat to Chelsea. Romero conceded a penalty with a wild lunge on Enzo Fernández and was sent off, too, having already – somehow – got away with clearly kicking out at Levi Colwill. Spurs ended the game with nine men and lost 4-1 on a night that completely derailed their fine start under Postecoglou.
Since then, though, moments that rash, wild and costly have been rarer. He has not given away another penalty or received a red card in any competition for Spurs. He also has only two yellow cards to his name in league games this season, having received at least seven and as many as 13 in each of his six full seasons in England and Italy. Only one of the 12 fouls he has committed in Premier League games this season has come anywhere near his team’s own penalty area.
But while any manager would understandably be wary of entirely quashing Romero’s aggressive nature, which is a big part of what makes him such an effective defender in individual battles in particular, there remains a rashness to some of his decision-making that can be as much of a hindrance as it is a help. In Spurs’ Europa League quarter-final first leg against Eintracht Frankfurt, it was apparent that Romero was still more than happy to go charging around the final third to try and win possession and let others cover for him.
It didn’t lead to any goals being conceded and so didn’t directly hurt his side. However, Romero bulldozing around with a kind of recklessness you just wouldn’t see from the Premier League’s other leading senior centre-backs could have been construed as mildly concerning. You just wouldn’t see Virgil van Dijk or William Saliba or Rúben Dias or even Spurs teammate Micky van de Ven – any of the Premier League’s best centre-backs – doing that. If Romero wants to join that group, maybe he needs to change his approach.
At a time when Spurs could really do with some calm, assurance and consistency in defence, chaos reigns supreme, and Romero’s renegade approach arguably isn’t helping. At Wolves, Romero was the only member of the first-choice back four that started the draw with Frankfurt who remained in the team, and the others that came in needed their leader to hold everything together.
But they ended up shipping four goals and 2.39 xG against a team who, before the game, hadn’t been out of the league’s bottom four all season. Spurs have now gone 10 games without a clean sheet in any competition, even with their first-choice defenders available again.
Romero does (usually) bring calm to Tottenham in possession, though. He is an elite progressive passer and rarely gets caught out like he did at Molineux on Sunday.
Of players with 1,000+ minutes played in the Premier League this season, only seven make more progressive passes (defined as completed open-play passes in the attacking two-thirds of the pitch that move the ball at least 25% closer to goal) than him (4.9 per 90). And only one of the players ahead of him – Brighton’s Jan Paul van Hecke – is a centre-back. It is rare to have a defender as comfortable on the ball as him.
Among outfielders in that group, only Joachim Anderson (542.7 metres per 90) and Van Dijk (519.6m per 90) have progressed play further upfield with their passing on average than Romero (524.5m per 90).
His 89.4% pass completion rate is even more impressive with the knowledge that he moves the ball forward quite so much.
Tottenham are a better team with Romero, and they miss what he does on the ball when he is absent. But that said, there has been little improvement in their form since his return from injury; Spurs average 1.2 points per Premier League game this season with Romero starting (17 games), compared to 1.1 per game without him (15 games). Their win percentage with him (35.3%) is only marginally higher than when he is missing (33.3%).
That can’t be put entirely down to the Argentine – Spurs’ problems run far deeper than him. But the display at Wolves proves his presence doesn’t bring the kind of stability to Tottenham’s backline that they need from their vice-captain. The drop-off without him hasn’t been so stark that Spurs should be scared about a life without him.
At a time when European football (and the money it brings) is looking extremely unlikely for next season, Spurs may have to consider offloading their most valuable assets, and there is an argument Romero could be expendable.
It’s worth pointing out that, in his defence, he has missed much of the season through injury, and so he hasn’t been able to build up much match sharpness and probably still isn’t playing at his full capacity as a result. But at the same time, he arguably hasn’t been available enough – due to both injury and suspension – throughout his time at Tottenham, and they could potentially do with someone more reliable in this sense, rather than someone who consistently misses at least a quarter – and sometimes half – of the season.
He does deserves sympathy for the demanding international schedule he endures. A FIFPRO report from last year calculated that Romero had travelled further for matches than any other player in world football during the 2023-24 season – a total distance of 162,978 kilometres – which would surely have taken its toll on him. Then, after winning the Copa América last summer, he had under three weeks between the final and starting pre-season training with Tottenham. Perhaps he came into this season without enough of a break.
But he remains a fantastic player, and as a recent World Cup winner, he is still one of the world’s leading centre-backs. Recent reports that Atlético Madrid, managed by fellow Argentine and kindred spirit Diego Simeone, are interested in signing Romero make perfect sense because he is surely destined to be playing in the Champions League. There is also talk that Real Madrid are looking at him, too.
Perhaps a different environment – like the Argentina national team – would suit Romero more than Postecoglou’s gung-ho football that leaves the defence exposed as much as it does. And maybe that would help bring out the best in him (after a summer’s break from international football, too).
At the end of the season, he will enter the final two years of his contract. That is probably the final point at which Tottenham could demand the kind of fee for him that might be worthwhile accepting, so they might just have a decision to make if any interest materialises. Having signed him for a reported fee of £42 million, they could quite feasibly look for £60m-plus for him this summer. Maybe more.
Tottenham have made mistakes in the past in choosing to hang on to players at a time when other clubs were interested in signing them for big money. Under Mauricio Pochettino, they could have sold the likes of Eric Dier, Danny Rose and Christian Eriksen at different times in big deals but chose not to, and the team stagnated.
This is a very, very different time, largely in the sense that this team is not flying high like Pochettino’s Spurs were. But the financial restraints on the club remain, as chairman Daniel Levy made clear in a recent statement regarding Tottenham’s end-of-year financial results, saying “…spending must be sustainable in the long term and within our operating revenues. Our capacity to generate recurring revenues determines our spending power. We cannot spend what we do not have, and we will not compromise the financial stability of this club.”
It’s a topic of great contention among a fanbase who believe the club hasn’t spent enough money to be as competitive as it should – or indeed could – have.
The truth they will have to accept, though, is likely that selling off a prized asset like Romero might be necessary. It might not sit easily with every fan; some might think it is another sign of a disappointing lack of ambition, that Spurs are a ‘selling club’ and not a ‘top club’.
But the evidence of this season proves a summer rebuild is needed, and sales may well be needed to fund that.
While Romero’s stock in world football remains high and he has long enough left on his contract to command a decent fee, Spurs could consider cashing in on one of their best players.
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Is It Time for Spurs to Cash in on Cristian Romero? Opta Analyst.
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