We’ve been hearing about it for awhile and now it’s official. Radu Drǎgușin has arrived at the RBCVPetc, passed his medicals, and signed for Fiorentina. He’ll get a contract that runs until 2031 and pay him €2 million a year per Nicolò Schira. According to Alasdair Gold, formula of the deal is a loan that becomes obligatory if the Romanian starts a a specified number of games, in which case Tottenham Hotspur will get €25 million as well as 10% of any sale.
The 24-year-old centerback joined the Juventus academy aged 16 and worked his way through the ranks, making 4 senior appearances, before breaking through on loan at Genoa in 2022, earning a €10 million move to the Grifoni a year later. Spurs swooped in 2024 with a €28 million offer but Drǎgușin failed to launch in North London, making just 48 appearances across 3 seasons. An ACL injury in 2025 kept him out nearly a year but even before then, he’d never looked like cracking the rotation.
I reached out to Dustin George-Miller, the managing editor at our Spurs sister site Cartilage Free Captain (and routinely one of the funniest people on the SB Nation soccer Slack channel), for his thoughts on Drǎgușin and he responded with this treasure trove of information.
Dragusin always felt like a weird fit at Tottenham Hotspur. He’s not a BAD defender, he’s just a bad defender for US. He was signed in January 2024 under Ange Postecoglou, which felt weird at the time since he’s not really a player built for a high line. He’s got decent positional defensive skills and is excellent in the air, but he doesn’t have the pace to excel in a high line, which made him a super odd choice for Ange’s tactics.
There was some thought he might be a better fit under Thomas Frank’s more pragmatic tactics, but he was firmly stuck behind Cuti Romero, Micky van de Ven, and Kevin Danso. Then he blew out his ACL in January 2025 and missed almost a full year. You could argue he never really got a chance at Spurs, but that’s not really true — we saw plenty of him when he was healthy and he just didn’t have the chops to really fit in in the Premier League.
In that sense, Fabio Paratici bringing him to Fiorentina feels like our old co-Sporting Director doing us a solid, Radu was perfectly cromulent in Italy as we’ve seen in his stints at Juventus, and loans to Sampdoria, Salernitana, and Genoa. He does like the occasional marauding run forward with the ball and is positionally fine, but he’s not especially great with the ball at his feet. I don’t know enough about Fiorentina to have a sense on if they want to play out of the back, but that would worry me a bit if they do.
In short, he’s at minimum a decent squad player in Serie A. I don’t know whether he’s good enough to nail down a starting spot in La Viola’s back line.
Fiorentina’s aerial struggles in either box last year were remarkable so Drǎgușin should at least help in that department. If he’s clunky on the ball, it could be a sign that Fabio Grosso’s planning a more direct approach than he displayed at Sassuolo; the Neroverdi owned Serie A’s 2nd-lowest PPDA last year, at least, indicating a lower line of engagement that should play to the new man’s strengths.
It’s no surprise that Fabio Paratici returned to his old stomping grounds in search of reinforcements, as that’s clearly part of his modus operandi (Manor Solomon, Daniele Rugani). Drǎgușin joins a suddenly crowded centerback group alongside new signing Viery as well as the incumbents Luca Ranieri, Marin Pongračić, and Pietro Comuzzo. Throw in returning loanees Matías Moreno and Nicolás Valentini and youth prospects Eddy Kouadio and Eman Košpo and it’s clear that Paratici has a lot of work left.
