Is Folarin Balogun the missing piece in Tottenham’s rebuild under Roberto De Zerbi?

Tottenham have opened talks with Monaco over Folarin Balogun, according to reports in France, and the asking price sits at around €60 million ($70m). For Spurs fans, though, the fee is not really the story. The story is that Roberto De Zerbi has identified his first cornerstone signing, and the stats explain why it is a striker.

Balogun would arrive as the USMNT’s starting No. 9, fresh from a home World Cup that made him one of the most searched names in American soccer. Newcastle have been credited with interest too, and Monaco are reportedly open to a sale. The stage is set, then, for the defining move of Tottenham’s summer, if De Zerbi can get it over the line before the window closes.

The Problem Balogun Would Solve

Start with the wreckage De Zerbi inherited. Tottenham burned through three managers in 2025/26, with Thomas Frank sacked in February and Igor Tudor lasting barely two months before De Zerbi arrived in the spring on a five-year deal, hired to steady a side looking over its shoulder rather than up the Premier League table.

The sharp end of the pitch was where the season unraveled. Dominic Solanke spent most of the campaign injured and finished with six goals in 20 appearances across all competitions, a steep fall from his 16-goal 2024/25. No settled manager, no fit striker, no reliable source of goals: that is the puzzle De Zerbi has been asked to solve, and he has reportedly admitted that only 10 to 12 of the current squad are good enough to take Spurs forward.

Seen through that lens, prioritizing attacking reinforcement before the season starts is not a luxury. It is the whole project.

What the Stats Say About Folarin Balogun

Balogun’s 2025/26 was his best season in a Monaco shirt: 13 goals and four assists in 31 Ligue 1 appearances, a goal every 173 minutes, while carrying the focal-point duties in Monaco’s attack.

The shape of those numbers matters more than the totals. Twelve of his 13 league goals arrived inside the box, he converted nine big chances, and he racked up 178 touches in the opposition penalty area. This is a striker who lives on the last shoulder and finishes the moves other players build, not a forward who drifts deep to pad his involvement.

Then came the summer that raised the stakes. Balogun scored three goals in five appearances at the World Cup, roughly one every 105 minutes, outperforming his expected goals figure of 1.78 on the biggest stage the sport has. The tournament also produced the stranger chapter of his year: a red card against Bosnia and Herzegovina, a ban suspended by FIFA after a reported phone call from President Trump, and a 4-1 exit to Belgium. For better and worse, no American player left the World Cup with a higher profile.

How Balogun Fits De Zerbi’s System

Here is where the fit gets interesting for Spurs fans. De Zerbi’s teams, from Brighton to Marseille, are built on patient build-up that baits the press, then strikes quickly into the space it leaves behind. The approach manufactures chances in the penalty area, and it asks one thing of the striker above all else: be there, and finish.

That is Balogun’s entire game. He attacks the space behind defenses, finishes off both feet and does his work where goals are scored, which is why a system designed to reach the box in volume should feed him constantly. His numbers on the counter fit the other half of De Zerbi’s attacking identity too, with ten of his shots last season arriving from fast-break situations.

The honest caveats belong in the same paragraph as the praise. Balogun is not an aerial threat, with no headed goals from 15 attempts last season, though that matters less in an attack built on cutbacks than it would in a crossing team. The bigger adaptation question is his back-to-goal work, because De Zerbi asks his striker to link play in tight spaces, and that has never been the loudest part of Balogun’s game. Ligue 1 goals do not always travel either, as Premier League defenses concede less space in behind.

Weigh it all and the profile still fits the system better than any striker currently at the club. A fully fit Solanke offers the link play, but not the running in behind or the finishing peak. Balogun offers the reverse, which is exactly why the pairing, and the competition between them, makes sense for a squad this thin up front.

Key Piece in the Puzzle, or Expensive Gamble?

Both, probably, and Spurs fans should be comfortable with that. Monaco’s reported €60 million asking price would double the fee they paid Arsenal for Balogun three years ago, which is what selling a striker at peak value looks like. Late-window interest from Newcastle only strengthens their hand, and De Zerbi does not have the luxury of waiting for the price to soften.

Some perspective on expectations helps too. Tottenham begin 2026/27 outside the leading group in the Premier League title odds, and nobody is pricing Balogun into the Golden Boot conversation yet. Neither is the point. The deal is about giving De Zerbi’s rebuild a dependable source of goals for the next five years, starting with a squad he has publicly declared short of them.

There is a subplot to savor as well: Balogun is an Arsenal academy product, and a direct switch across north London remains one of the rarer moves in English football. He left the Emirates in 2023 with only a handful of Premier League appearances, so his first real top-flight chapter in England would be written on the other side of the divide.

A willing seller, a buyer with an obvious need and a striker whose profile matches the system waiting for him: the ingredients are all there. Whether Tottenham meet Monaco’s number before the window closes will decide whether De Zerbi’s rebuild gets its cornerstone, so keep watching this one.

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