It’s that time of the year again. Come the end of the season, football fans will have absolutely nothing to look forward to but two-and-a-half months of news and rumours swirling in the giant melting pot that is the summer transfer window.
Players will come and go while managers will be hired and fired (unless they go by the name Arsene Wenger). Agents will leak details of non-existent deals as scare tactics to coerce clubs into giving players bigger contracts while clubs surreptitiously leak reports of their own so fans renew their season tickets for the upcoming season.
It’s a circus that has takers and will always be so as transfer fees increase almost exponentially with every window. And at the centre of it all are the players that hog the headlines. We look at five players who will be the subject of never-ending transfer sagas this summer.
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5) Alexis Sanchez: Arsenal
If Arsenal play their cards right, they could hold on to one of their best signings in recent years. Signed for £35m from Barcelona in 2014, Alexis has been the club’s top goalscorer in two of the last three seasons. He could have easily topped the charts in all three seasons had he not been sidelined with an injury in the 2015/16 campaign.
The club is in dire straits. Once the bastion of stability in club football, the institution that is Arsenal Football Club is now crumbling with the fans in an uproar over the club’s lack of ambition despite promises to compete with Europe’s elite once they were financially secure.
The Chilean forward, one of six nominees for this season’s PFA Player of the Year, could be the first to lead a mass exodus of players who enter the final year of their contract. He has refused to sign a contract extension and has claimed he will only take a decision in the summer.
With Arsenal staring at the probability of missing out on Champions League qualification for the first time in Wenger’s reign, that may be a deciding factor in the 28-year-old’s decision to stay or leave. However, the club’s transfer plans will also have a final say.
If Alexis is unhappy with what he sees, he will surely leave. We’ve seen it all before with Robin van Persie. Bayern Munich and Juventus are interested in securing his services and they have the financial power to pay the transfer fee and lure him with high wages.
And should the Chilean leave, the Gunners will be back to square one – back to being dubbed a “selling club”.
4) Romelu Lukaku: Everton
Everton; a club that have always been on the cusp of greatness but never achieving or fulfilling their true potential. The weaker of the two Merseyside clubs that have struggled in mid-table mediocrity in recent years, the Toffees briefly flirted with Champions League qualification before conceding points in crucial fixtures.
But they do have the Premier League’s top goalscorer this season. Romelu Lukaku – signed for a club record £28m after impressing on loan (the club took great pains to point out that it was a club record at the time) – has scored 24 goals this season. The 23-year-old striker is well on course to win the Golden Boot but he does have Harry Kane breathing down his neck.
He has started all but two league games this season and his performances have already won the admiration of two managers looking to replace their own strikers. Chelsea’s Antonio Conte looks resigned to the fact that Diego Costa will not be around next season and signing Lukaku – a former Blues player himself – looks like his best bet on bringing in a player whose physicality and eye for goal in the Premier League has been immense.
The other is Manchester United’s Jose Mourinho. With 35-year-old Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s season over and no timetable on his possible return, the club may not offer him a new contract next season without knowing how effective he would be. Another season in transition is not what Mourinho wants and a readymade striker who can play on for years is one he desperately needs.
Lukaku himself has questioned Everton’s ambitions saying they’ve been “living in the past” – alluding to their pride in the club’s history with no real plans for the future. Having rejected a contract extension, he could be on his way out of Goodison Park – but to which Premier League side?
3) Alvaro Morata: Real Madrid
Alvaro Morata is Spain’s first-choice striker (when the Costa experiment failed) but he barely gets to start at one of the country’s biggest clubs. Real Madrid boss Zinedine Zidane has persisted with Karim Benzema up front in spite of his poor form and Morata has been reduced to a backup striker who warms the bench.
Morata occasionally comes on as a substitute or starts games when squad rotation is in effect. Yet, in spite of playing fewer minutes than Benzema and Gareth Bale this season, he is second in the Liga goalscoring charts among the club’s players with 13 goals – behind Cristiano Ronaldo (20).
It comes as no surprise then that he has been linked with a move away from the Bernabeu. And he is not short of any takers with Chelsea very much interested in bringing him to Stamford Bridge.
Antonio Conte was the manager who sanctioned the deal to first bring him to Juventus but the Italian manager never got the chance to use him as he took up the job with the Italian national team. Now, he may finally get his wish with reports claiming that a £63 bid may see him move to London.
“I feel indebted to him because he’s the coach that most trusted in me, most wanted me, who made me feel I could perform at the highest level. And yet I’ve never had the fortune to actually work with him. I’m sure sooner or later I will.” – Morata on Conte
However, there are reports that claim Morata may move to Old Trafford to work with former boss Jose Mourinho. It was the former Madrid boss who handed Morata a debut as a youngster. Could Manchester United go for Morata if they fail to sign their other targets?
2) Kylian Mbappe: AS Monaco
Once upon a time, Monaco looked to buy their way to the top – just as the likes of Chelsea, Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain had done. They bought some stars such as Radamel Falcao and James Rodriguez before club owner Dmitry Rybolovlev’s messy divorce saw the spending come to a screeching halt.
Leonardo Jardim was forced to change the club’s philosophy and started promoting youngsters and Kylian Mbappe is one of the diamonds in the rough that has started to sparkle in Europe and it has managed to capture everybody’s undivided attention.
The young French striker, who turned 18 midway through the season, took his time to establish himself at the club. But once he took off, there was no stopping him. The second half of the season saw him burst into the limelight on not only the domestic scene but in Europe as well.
An 18-year-old scoring 16 goals in his last 16 games is an astonishing feat that is hard to miss and he brings back memories of a young Thierry Henry with his movement and running. Of course, Arsene Wenger nearly signed him last summer.
According to reports in Spain, Mbappe has already agreed to join Real Madrid in the summer. But this could be a smokescreen as the club’s vice-president Vadim Vasilyev was confident the club would do everything to keep the teenager who would get plenty of opportunities at Monaco, especially since next year is a World Cup year.
1) Antoine Griezmann: Atletico Madrid
Poor Antoine Griezmann. The French striker has finished runners-up in the Champions League, Euro 2016 and was literally a sideshow in the 2016 ‘Best FIFA Football Awards’ after garnering just 7.5% of the votes.
The 26-year-old’s rise to the top of the pile has been rapid and the Atletico Madrid has not exactly warmed up to the fame that has come with it. Time and again he sweeps aside questions on his future plans to the point where he has become frustrated with all the attention.
A player who would rather prefer having the spotlight on him when he is on the pitch, there is no escape from the media and he has resigned himself to the fact that his future will always be their main priority.
Again, it is Manchester United who seem to be in pole position to sign him as they have the resources at their disposal to trigger the reported release clause of £85m. However, he has mentioned that the weather may put him off from moving to the Old Trafford club. But £280,000-a-week may convince him to sign the dotted line.
Even Real Madrid have been linked and crossing the divide may be on the cards as his wife is reportedly not interested in leaving Spain. It would appear scandalous, but he has switched clubs in Spain before when he moved from Real Sociedad to Atletico. Will he do it again?
