Report: Tottenham ‘hopeful’ of signing Paulo Dybala before Thursday’s deadline

There are only hours left to go in the Premier League’s summer transfer window, and when it comes to Juventus-related things that have to do with that it’s safe to say that all eyes are on Paulo Dybala.

And for very good reason.

Dybala, who has been linked with a pair of Premier League sides over the last week, could very well seal a deal to England before Thursday’s 5 p.m. local time deadline arrives. Even with time running out, Tottenham is “hopeful” that a deal can be completed with the player himself before the summer transfer window closes, according to a report from BBC Sport on Thursday morning. It is believed that, after reports surfaced Wednesday that Juventus and Spurs had agreed to the framework of a €70 million deal, all that is left for Dybala to agree to personal terms and his image rights issues to be sorted out if a deal were to be finished in time.

Of course, we’ve been down this same kind of road — not an Old Town Road (sorry, couldn’t help it, folks) — less than week ago when Juventus were reportedly negotiating a swap deal with Manchester United involving Dybala and Romelu Lukaku. As it turned out, agreeing personal terms and sorting out image rights issues was what saw the deal fall through. Dybala has obviously been in talks with Tottenham since, while Lukaku is undergoing his medical exams with Inter Milan at some point early Thursday.

So, now, we wait.

At this point, it’s clear that Juventus want to sell Dybala. Why, exactly, that is something that nobody at the club has really even talked about. Everything we’ve heard about Fabio Paratici has been about how he’s been traveling back and forth to London to negotiate with both Manchester United, Manchester City for the Joao Cancelo-Danilo swap deal and now to try and find some kind of agreement with Tottenham for Dybala. He hasn’t talked much at all to the press ever since Matthijs de Ligt’s introductory press conference, and the only time we’ve seen him is when he posed for pictures with new signings and their new jerseys.

Other than that, it’s been very quiet from the Juventus front office — which may or may not be a good thing knowing that they’ve just sold one of the best young talents in Europe in Moise Kean, they’ve sold an incredibly talented fullback in Joao Cancelo and they could see their No. 10 depart for a price tag that might not actually come close to what he’s worth.