Tottenham Hotspur missed out on one of their higher-profile transfer targets when Luis Diaz signed for Liverpool, but things could have got even worse for the London side on deadline day.
Spurs completed late moves for Juventus pair Dejan Kulusevski and Rodrigo Bentancur, but reports from Portugal claim one of the contracts sent out to an eventual signing still carried the name of Diaz.
Diaz joined Liverpool for an initial £37.5m, though the fee could rise to £50m with add-ons, with Spurs' failure to get a deal over the line leaving chairman Daniel Levy furious.
Spurs were left with little time to get their own business concluded, having also missed out on Adama Traore when the Wolves man rejoined Barcelona on loan, and this is believed to have prompted the further deadline day confusion.
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Uruguay midfielder Bentancur moved to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on a permanent deal, while Kulusevski's switch is a loan with an option to buy.
However, according to Portuguese outlet Record (via Sport Witness ), Bentancur's lawyers received a contract which still bore Diaz's name.
The misstep left "a lot of people surprised," journalist Sergio Krithinas noted while discussing Spurs' deadline day business.
Bentancur has described joining Spurs as "a pleasure and an honour," and has now linked up with his teammates off the back of a World Cup qualifying goal against Venezuela.
“I was very happy when I heard about the interest in me and thankfully I’ve joined now," he told club media while away with his national team.
“As I said, it’s a brilliant Club and a great league that I’ve always liked and now I’m going to have the chance to enjoy it alongside the other great players that we have.
"I think they’ll help me to grow a lot on a footballing level, and obviously we’ll always try to give everything we can to represent the Club together.”
Swedish winger Kulusevski joined Juventus from Atalanta in 2020, but revealed upon joining Spurs that he always had the Premier League in his sights.
"The Premier League has always been the league – since I was 15 I was thinking about the Premier League because that’s what we watched in Sweden, that was the best league in the world and I still think it is," he said.
"It’s just another world. I was always thinking ‘when can I go there?’ and then when this opportunity came, I didn’t think twice."
The two new arrivals weren't Spurs' only bit of deadline day business, with a number of players also leaving the club either permanently or on loan.
Dele Alli moved to fellow Premier League side Everton, while Tanguy Ndombele rejoined former club Lyon on loan and there were also Spanish loans for Bryan Gil and Giovani Lo Celso.
