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During his spell as Tottenham Hotspur chairman, Daniel Levy built a reputation as one of football’s toughest operators in the transfer market — and this episode only adds to that image.

Back in 2013, Tottenham Hotspur were trying to sign Croatian pair Alen Halilovic and Tin Jedvaj in a joint deal, with negotiations taking place with then-Dinamo Zagreb director Zdravko Mamic.

Levy and Mamic already had previous dealings — in 2008, they completed a joint-club record transfer for future Ballon d’Or winner Luka Modric — and this fresh round of talks was expected to cost Spurs €25 million.

Levy’s hard-nosed approach over money had already been seen during the Modric discussions, but Mamic said in a 2019 interview, exclusively with FourFourTwo, that the boardroom encounter over Halilovic and Jedvaj became even more heated.

At that stage, teenage Halilovic was being billed as the next Modric, while Jedvaj was regarded as a player who could transform a defence.

Jedvaj eventually joined Roma in 2013, while Halilovic drew interest from Barcelona — although after those moves, neither went on to enjoy a top-level career in Europe — and Mamic explained just how close Spurs came to signing both players.

The former Zagreb director said: “I negotiated with [Levy] over the transfers of Alen Halilovic and Tin Jedvaj to Tottenham. My son was their agent and translator, and I represented the interests of Dinamo.

Mamic then described how Tottenham’s low opening bid sparked his anger: “We sat in Levy’s office with the sporting director, Franco Baldini, and Levy offered us around €10m as his secretary served us tea. After hearing their offer, I told my son to thank Levy,” Mamic continued.

“[I also told him] to ask if ‘I should drink my tea, or just go straight home?’ My son did not want to translate that!

“Levy and Baldini realised that I had become a little more aggressive, then I told them ‘Idite vi svi u picku materinu’ [the Croatian equivalent of ‘go f*** yourself’].

“They stood up and asked me to stay, because €10m was not their final offer for the players. After that we continued the negotiations and agreed a fee of €25m,” Mamic told FFT.

Explaining why the transfer later broke down, the former Zagreb director said that fresh demands from one player’s camp ended up wrecking the agreement.

“Unfortunately, the deal eventually fell through, partly because of crazy new demands from Halilovic’s side,” claimed Mamic. The midfielder would finally play in England almost a decade later — for Birmingham City and then Reading in the Championship.

Jedvaj, whose top-division career was spent mainly with Bayer Leverkusen in the Bundesliga, is now with Al-Shabab, while Halilovic, still only 30, is without a club after leaving Fortuna Sittard.

Even so, it seems Mamic came very close to pulling off the perfect move by sending them to Spurs, despite Levy’s tense boardroom behaviour — and he might have managed it too, if not for those late complications from Halilovic’s side.