Richarlison has asked to leave Tottenham repeatedly this summer. Roberto De Zerbi has confirmed it. Spurs still won't — or can't — let him go.
The 29-year-old striker is in a situation that gets messier by the day. He's been left out of De Zerbi's 25-man Premier League squad, not out of spite, but because Spurs could only register 17 non-homegrown players and the numbers didn't add up. That omission isn't something the club can fix until January. Right now, Richarlison can't play a single league minute for the club paying his wages.
Why the exit door is basically sealed shut
Here's where it gets complicated. Richarlison's camp has been looking at legal routes, including using Article 15 of FIFA's Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players to terminate his contract on sporting just cause. The clause exists for exactly this kind of situation — a professional frozen out, unable to feature. But there's a catch: a player must have appeared in fewer than 10% of official matches across the season before that option becomes available. And crucially, the termination can only be filed in the 15 days following the club's last match of the season. That window is months away. Any legal challenge right now would go nowhere fast.
A loan to Vasco da Gama — the club he grew up supporting — would make emotional and practical sense. Except Spurs have already sent out six players on international loan this summer: Vicario, Sarr, Dragusin, Souza, Takai, and Yang Min-hyeok. Six is the FIFA-permitted maximum. The only carve-out applies to players 21 and under who are club-trained, which is why Mikey Moore's loan to Köln doesn't count against the limit. Richarlison, at 29, doesn't qualify.
So Vasco would need to buy him outright. And there are no active negotiations between the clubs. The Brazilian transfer window closes Friday.
A strange position for last season's top scorer
This is the same player who led Tottenham's scoring charts last season. He started their Premier League opener at Brentford just weeks ago. Now he's in a grey zone — photographed training with the senior squad this week despite earlier suggestions he'd been pushed toward the U21 setup, while De Zerbi chose to register Xavi Simons, who is months away from returning from an ACL injury, ahead of him in the squad.
That decision alone tells you everything about where Richarlison sits in the manager's thinking. A fully fit striker bumped for a player on crutches. The message doesn't need translating.
He turned down a return to Everton this summer over money, watched a Trabzonspor deal collapse before the Turkish window shut, and is now watching the Brazilian deadline arrive with no deal close. His contract runs until next summer, with Spurs holding an extension option on top of that — which means they have all the leverage and he has almost none.
Any move to Vasco would need to happen as a permanent transfer, completed before Friday, without formal negotiations even underway. The numbers don't lie: this one is almost certainly running into the window's close.
