The Athletic.

Welcome to the Athletic Football Podcast and Mark Chapman coming up a little later in the

pod.

We'll discuss Antonio Conte's future at Tottenham ahead of a huge North London Derby against Arsenal this week. And We'll speak to our Italian football writer James Horncastle about the two

Milan teams battling for the Saria title race.

First up though on the pod we're joined by the athletics David Ornstein and

Adam Crafton two big stories about the futures of two big players in your column

this week David Erling Harland first up that, that's a done deal, yes?

Yeah, the way it's been described to me, Mark,

is that this situation is done and dusted now.

By that, we don't mean it's completed,

but Erling Harland is going to be signing for Manchester City. We initially reported I think it was last month that initial personal terms had been agreed between City and Harland and it just needed to be formalised and finalised and put into ink.

That part of things is now complete. So all that needs to be done is city paying the release clause,

conducting medicals and that sort of thing. and therefore it's more of a formality.

The main hurdle was the personal terms and the rest will follow in due course.

The clubs have been in contact and the vibe I get from sources in Germany is that Dortmund perhaps somewhat

surprisingly have viewed that as being cordial so far they can't really do much about the

situation to be fair and that Dortmund expect in the coming days to receive notification from city of cities intention to activate the release clause in Erling Harlan's contract.

And once that happens, it will escalate very quickly and announcements will have to be made and that's why confirmation as

things stand is expected this week and it will all lead to Erling Harlem becoming

a Manchester City player once you're able to register and link up with them for pre-season

and the end of that saga is nice.

...