Transfer Rumours 21/22
- Thread starter King Binny
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He’s fit right in.
Next season should be the one where the attacking line get injured constantly.
talented kid -
Clearly didn't watch Klopp's Arsenal pre match presser then.
50 million loan fee and we can accept I guess.
Not in January, while our squad is decimated by thee AFCON.
Maybe on the last day of January then.
After Haaland has arrived.
Hahaha...as if.
It’s Mbappe.
Its honestly more believable. We can potentially sign him on a pre contract.
Vlahovic can score every type of goal and is available for €80m – no wonder English clubs are interested
By James Horncastle Nov 24, 2021
19
What was Dusan Vlahovic trying to say? After scoring his 27th Serie A goal of the calendar year, a number surpassed only by Robert Lewandowski in Europe’s top five leagues, he celebrated by pointing downwards as if to say, “The Artemio Franchi is my home.” Whether he meant the gesture to signify that on a foggy Saturday night in Florence was unclear.
Serie A’s reigning young player of the year was fresh from qualifying for next year’s World Cup as his Serbia side upset Portugal 2-1 in Lisbon. Now he was upstaging Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Anything the AC Milan striker tried, Vlahovic could do better.
They had swapped shirts after their previous encounter in March. “We lost 3-2, so he wasn’t very angry when I asked him for it,” Vlahovic told DAZN. “Zlatan signed it, we had a photo taken and he wrote a tribute. He told me to keep doing what I’m doing and to never give up.
“I didn’t say much. It’s hard when you meet your idol.”
As they both traipsed down the underpass leading to the dressing rooms, Vlahovic knew he had come out on top this time around. Both of them had scored twice but the winning goal was curled in by the Serb, who ended Milan’s unbeaten start to the Serie A season in an entertaining if error-strewn 4-3 thriller.
Fiorentina haven’t had a player this prolific over a calendar year in more than 60 years, since one of Ibrahimovic’s Swedish forebears Kurt Hamrin — aka “The Little Bird” — was swooping around the Franchi. That was an era when the goals-per-game average in Serie A was similar to today, a more innocent time before Nereo Rocco and Helenio Herrera locked up the league’s defences and established catenaccio as the pre-eminent ideology in Italian football. It resisted for decades, which is why goals became so hard to come by and Gabriel Batistuta’s numbers for the club in the 1990s carry more weight.
Naturally, it’s to ‘Batigol’ that all Fiorentina strikers are compared. That was the case with Luca Toni when he became the first Italian to win the European Golden Shoe in 2006 and it’s true of Vlahovic now. The number of goals — 40 for club and country since the start of last season — is impressive enough, even if 11 have come from the penalty spot. Look around Europe and only Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe have more club goals in that time among forwards who were under the age of 23 at the start of 2021-22.
What truly astounds is the variety to the 21-year-old Vlahovic’s finishing.
Let’s kick off with the spectacular.
Here, Vlahovic takes down a long punt from goalkeeper Bartlomiej Dragowski, who isn’t expecting his hoof upfield to become an assist…
… but Vlahovic adroitly nudges the ball inside, drives at the Benevento defence and curls one into the top corner.
That jaw-dropping goal completed a first-half hat-trick and if you were to flick through the calcio almanacs looking for the last Fiorentina player to score one of those, your finger would once again stop on a line next to that man Hamrin’s name.
To find someone more precocious than Vlahovic to hit a hat-trick for them, you have to go back to 1983 and Paolo Monelli, who famously scored from his own half against Napoli.
Staying outside the box, the Uffizi-worthy free kick Vlahovic recently whipped by Cagliari’s Alessio Cragno rivals the Benevento strike above as his best goal for the club. Vlahovic usually defers to Cristiano Biraghi on set pieces and hadn’t scored one of these in before in Serie A. “Today, we swapped,” Biraghi said. “I took the penalty (usually Vlahovic’s preserve). He took the free kicks.”
Both ended up scoring but the incident remained a source of curiosity.
Serie A’s apparently on-demand team of lip readers claimed to have seen Vlahovic tell Biraghi, “I don’t feel like it,” as they lingered over the spot. The penalty was in front of the Curva Fiesole, where the Fiorentina ultras stand and you’d think the crowd would suck the goal in. Why pass it up?
Biraghi downplayed the affair, insisting there was nothing more to it other than a one-off role reversal.
It just so happened the free kick was made to look as simple as a penalty by Vlahovic, for whom even the hardest of finishes appear straightforward.
Take this glancing header as another example. High in difficulty, the cross was fired in powerfully and seemed to be going behind the 6ft 3in Vlahovic, who contorted his neck enough to direct it into the far corner.
As for his winning goal in Naples, a place Fiorentina hadn’t left with all three points in six years, Vlahovic took on his man, driving the defender back into the penalty area before using his opponent’s body to obscure his intention from the goalkeeper, which was to find an angle inside the far post.
Vlahovic’s ability to carry the ball, often from great distances, beat defenders for pace, hold them off and hide the ball long enough to get off a shot has also distinguished his play over the last year.
Look at the clock in the top left-hand corner of this next screengrab. Vlahovic has played more than 90 minutes against the champions-elect and the best defence in Italy, yet he runs at Inter Milan centre-backs Stefan de Vrij and Milan Skriniar and still has the lucidity to keep his wits about him and score after making a gut-busting dash from his own half.
Another of the goals in this subsection of Vlahovic’s repertoire will almost certainly live longer in the memory of the Fiorentina supporters who were there to see it in Turin.
Unlike the run against Inter above, this one came right at the start of a game rather than at the end of one, but goals against Juventus are cherished like no other at Fiorentina.
Franck Ribery’s pass gave Vlahovic a head start on Matthijs de Ligt, who is no slouch and matches Federico Chiesa stride-for-stride in training. But even he couldn’t stop Vlahovic from going on to score from here and open his account at the Allianz Stadium, on a day when Fiorentina would win 3-0.
It was their biggest margin of victory away to the Old Lady since 1955 and promised to make Vlahovic a hero in Florence.
Understandably, Fiorentina wished to reward him and began preparing a new contract beyond the one currently tying him to the club until 2023. Anyone could see Vlahovic was a player to build around, just as Batistuta had been for Vittorio Cecchi Gori 25 years ago.
Owner Rocco Commisso and the executive team at Fiorentina worked on a deal and believed they had one agreed. Vlahovic was to become the highest-paid player in club history. Adjusted for inflation or not, the intention was to put him in the same bracket as Batistuta, Rui Costa, Toni and Mario Gomez (fear not if you have no memory of the latter’s forgettable spell this side of the Campo Marte train tracks).
The Athletic understands Vlahovic was offered a new five-year deal worth €3.5 million per season that would become €4 million annually if he met a series of easily achievable performance-related targets. Haggling ensued over a release clause — the club suggested €100 million and the agents working for Vlahovic countered with €60 million before they agreed to meet in the middle.
Everything seemed to be progressing well.
After the final game before the end of the transfer window, a 2-1 win sealed by the Vlahovic header pictured above, the player said on Sky Italia: “I never pushed to leave despite some very big offers coming in for me and the club.” The impression given was of a player who wished to stay.
So it came as an unpleasant and embittering surprise when the tremendous effort Fiorentina had made to retain Vlahovic was not deemed good enough.
This is an ambitious club with owners fighting to reform Serie A.
It means sustainability. It means weaning the league off debt and building new stadiums that can drive the kind of revenues that permit teams to buy the best and keep the best players in Italy. It means better regulation, whether that’s capping agent fees in line with the proposals FIFA are making to prevent another €138 million leaving Serie A in commissions as was the case over the past year, not to mention enforcing financial fair play.
For now, though, meaningful change to the Italian football landscape is yet to come.
During the October international break, owner Commisso offered the definitive update on the situation in a statement saying: “As you know, Fiorentina made a very significant offer to the player. Our proposal would have made him the highest-paid player in the history of the club. We also improved our offer on a number of occasions in order to accommodate the requests of both Dusan and his entourage. However, despite our efforts, those offers have not been accepted.
“I have endeavoured to find a solution that would make both the player and the club happy, but I am disappointed to say that our efforts and attempts have not been rewarded. At this point, all that we can do is acknowledge the wishes of the player and his entourage and quickly identify feasible, appropriate solutions as we proceed with this exciting new season.”
When Vlahovic returned from his role in Serbia’s World Cup qualifiers that month, the first whistles from the Fiesole were heard as his name was read out over the loudspeaker before kick-off against Cagliari — the game where he scored a free kick but left the penalty in front of the ultras to Biraghi.
In Venice a few days later, the Fiorentina players went over to toss the travelling fans their shirts in apology for a 1-0 defeat. Vlahovic came in for abuse. He was called a hunchback — the derogatory name Fiorentina fans give to anyone associated with Juventus — amid the suspicion Juve are preparing to lure him to Turin, just as they did Chiesa and Federico Bernardeschi.
Vlahovic was led away by Lorenzo Venuti and Biraghi, who defended his team-mate on DAZN.
“Dusan is the same guy he’s always been,” the wing-back said. “I’ve known him for five years. There isn’t a problem with Vlahovic. We went over to the fans who have travelled miles and miles to support us. We decided to give them our jerseys, seeing as we couldn’t given them a win. The defeat hurts. We could have done more.”
What, then, to make of Vlahovic’s gesture against Milan? Did he really mean he is staying and if so, for how long? He had a contract offer, after all. Equally, it may well be the case that the gesture was misinterpreted, self-serving or meant nothing.
Reluctantly, Fiorentina are having to prepare for life without him. Atletico Madrid wanted Vlahovic last summer and The Athletic understands four Premier League clubs were sounded out in the middle last month. The price in January is €80 million (£67.3 million) — and that was before his goals at the weekend.
Selling him would be especially hard to swallow when Fiorentina look like they might return to European competition for the first time in four years under Vincenzo Italiano, whose reputation as the brightest young coach in Serie A undergoes further enhancement. Fiorentina are on the up, which makes all this bittersweet. Better perhaps to identify a buyer this winter who would be prepared to loan him back until the end of the season.
When Batistuta left for Roma in 2000, the fans melted down his statue. But when the anger subsided, they did not begrudge him the move.
He had spent almost a decade at the club and even went down to the second division with them. The Argentinian got the Viola back up to the top flight and did everything in his power to deliver the title they had been craving since 1969, coming closest on the 40th anniversary of that scudetto only for an untimely injury and Edmundo’s selfish decision to fly off to the Rio carnival to derail the team.
The hope was Vlahovic might be Fiorentina’s new ‘Batigol’, or at least give them a few more years.
But with Haaland’s Borussia Dortmund release clause about to kick in next summer and Mbappe’s contract up at Paris Saint-Germain, the upcoming transfer windows will be defined by the striker sweepstakes, and he will undoubtedly be one of the most coveted on the market.
By James Horncastle Nov 24, 2021
What was Dusan Vlahovic trying to say? After scoring his 27th Serie A goal of the calendar year, a number surpassed only by Robert Lewandowski in Europe’s top five leagues, he celebrated by pointing downwards as if to say, “The Artemio Franchi is my home.” Whether he meant the gesture to signify that on a foggy Saturday night in Florence was unclear.
Serie A’s reigning young player of the year was fresh from qualifying for next year’s World Cup as his Serbia side upset Portugal 2-1 in Lisbon. Now he was upstaging Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Anything the AC Milan striker tried, Vlahovic could do better.
They had swapped shirts after their previous encounter in March. “We lost 3-2, so he wasn’t very angry when I asked him for it,” Vlahovic told DAZN. “Zlatan signed it, we had a photo taken and he wrote a tribute. He told me to keep doing what I’m doing and to never give up.
“I didn’t say much. It’s hard when you meet your idol.”
As they both traipsed down the underpass leading to the dressing rooms, Vlahovic knew he had come out on top this time around. Both of them had scored twice but the winning goal was curled in by the Serb, who ended Milan’s unbeaten start to the Serie A season in an entertaining if error-strewn 4-3 thriller.
Fiorentina haven’t had a player this prolific over a calendar year in more than 60 years, since one of Ibrahimovic’s Swedish forebears Kurt Hamrin — aka “The Little Bird” — was swooping around the Franchi. That was an era when the goals-per-game average in Serie A was similar to today, a more innocent time before Nereo Rocco and Helenio Herrera locked up the league’s defences and established catenaccio as the pre-eminent ideology in Italian football. It resisted for decades, which is why goals became so hard to come by and Gabriel Batistuta’s numbers for the club in the 1990s carry more weight.
Naturally, it’s to ‘Batigol’ that all Fiorentina strikers are compared. That was the case with Luca Toni when he became the first Italian to win the European Golden Shoe in 2006 and it’s true of Vlahovic now. The number of goals — 40 for club and country since the start of last season — is impressive enough, even if 11 have come from the penalty spot. Look around Europe and only Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe have more club goals in that time among forwards who were under the age of 23 at the start of 2021-22.
What truly astounds is the variety to the 21-year-old Vlahovic’s finishing.
Let’s kick off with the spectacular.
Here, Vlahovic takes down a long punt from goalkeeper Bartlomiej Dragowski, who isn’t expecting his hoof upfield to become an assist…
… but Vlahovic adroitly nudges the ball inside, drives at the Benevento defence and curls one into the top corner.
That jaw-dropping goal completed a first-half hat-trick and if you were to flick through the calcio almanacs looking for the last Fiorentina player to score one of those, your finger would once again stop on a line next to that man Hamrin’s name.
To find someone more precocious than Vlahovic to hit a hat-trick for them, you have to go back to 1983 and Paolo Monelli, who famously scored from his own half against Napoli.
Staying outside the box, the Uffizi-worthy free kick Vlahovic recently whipped by Cagliari’s Alessio Cragno rivals the Benevento strike above as his best goal for the club. Vlahovic usually defers to Cristiano Biraghi on set pieces and hadn’t scored one of these in before in Serie A. “Today, we swapped,” Biraghi said. “I took the penalty (usually Vlahovic’s preserve). He took the free kicks.”
Both ended up scoring but the incident remained a source of curiosity.
Serie A’s apparently on-demand team of lip readers claimed to have seen Vlahovic tell Biraghi, “I don’t feel like it,” as they lingered over the spot. The penalty was in front of the Curva Fiesole, where the Fiorentina ultras stand and you’d think the crowd would suck the goal in. Why pass it up?
Biraghi downplayed the affair, insisting there was nothing more to it other than a one-off role reversal.
It just so happened the free kick was made to look as simple as a penalty by Vlahovic, for whom even the hardest of finishes appear straightforward.
Take this glancing header as another example. High in difficulty, the cross was fired in powerfully and seemed to be going behind the 6ft 3in Vlahovic, who contorted his neck enough to direct it into the far corner.
As for his winning goal in Naples, a place Fiorentina hadn’t left with all three points in six years, Vlahovic took on his man, driving the defender back into the penalty area before using his opponent’s body to obscure his intention from the goalkeeper, which was to find an angle inside the far post.
Vlahovic’s ability to carry the ball, often from great distances, beat defenders for pace, hold them off and hide the ball long enough to get off a shot has also distinguished his play over the last year.
Look at the clock in the top left-hand corner of this next screengrab. Vlahovic has played more than 90 minutes against the champions-elect and the best defence in Italy, yet he runs at Inter Milan centre-backs Stefan de Vrij and Milan Skriniar and still has the lucidity to keep his wits about him and score after making a gut-busting dash from his own half.
Another of the goals in this subsection of Vlahovic’s repertoire will almost certainly live longer in the memory of the Fiorentina supporters who were there to see it in Turin.
Unlike the run against Inter above, this one came right at the start of a game rather than at the end of one, but goals against Juventus are cherished like no other at Fiorentina.
Franck Ribery’s pass gave Vlahovic a head start on Matthijs de Ligt, who is no slouch and matches Federico Chiesa stride-for-stride in training. But even he couldn’t stop Vlahovic from going on to score from here and open his account at the Allianz Stadium, on a day when Fiorentina would win 3-0.
It was their biggest margin of victory away to the Old Lady since 1955 and promised to make Vlahovic a hero in Florence.
Understandably, Fiorentina wished to reward him and began preparing a new contract beyond the one currently tying him to the club until 2023. Anyone could see Vlahovic was a player to build around, just as Batistuta had been for Vittorio Cecchi Gori 25 years ago.
Owner Rocco Commisso and the executive team at Fiorentina worked on a deal and believed they had one agreed. Vlahovic was to become the highest-paid player in club history. Adjusted for inflation or not, the intention was to put him in the same bracket as Batistuta, Rui Costa, Toni and Mario Gomez (fear not if you have no memory of the latter’s forgettable spell this side of the Campo Marte train tracks).
The Athletic understands Vlahovic was offered a new five-year deal worth €3.5 million per season that would become €4 million annually if he met a series of easily achievable performance-related targets. Haggling ensued over a release clause — the club suggested €100 million and the agents working for Vlahovic countered with €60 million before they agreed to meet in the middle.
Everything seemed to be progressing well.
After the final game before the end of the transfer window, a 2-1 win sealed by the Vlahovic header pictured above, the player said on Sky Italia: “I never pushed to leave despite some very big offers coming in for me and the club.” The impression given was of a player who wished to stay.
So it came as an unpleasant and embittering surprise when the tremendous effort Fiorentina had made to retain Vlahovic was not deemed good enough.
This is an ambitious club with owners fighting to reform Serie A.
It means sustainability. It means weaning the league off debt and building new stadiums that can drive the kind of revenues that permit teams to buy the best and keep the best players in Italy. It means better regulation, whether that’s capping agent fees in line with the proposals FIFA are making to prevent another €138 million leaving Serie A in commissions as was the case over the past year, not to mention enforcing financial fair play.
For now, though, meaningful change to the Italian football landscape is yet to come.
During the October international break, owner Commisso offered the definitive update on the situation in a statement saying: “As you know, Fiorentina made a very significant offer to the player. Our proposal would have made him the highest-paid player in the history of the club. We also improved our offer on a number of occasions in order to accommodate the requests of both Dusan and his entourage. However, despite our efforts, those offers have not been accepted.
“I have endeavoured to find a solution that would make both the player and the club happy, but I am disappointed to say that our efforts and attempts have not been rewarded. At this point, all that we can do is acknowledge the wishes of the player and his entourage and quickly identify feasible, appropriate solutions as we proceed with this exciting new season.”
When Vlahovic returned from his role in Serbia’s World Cup qualifiers that month, the first whistles from the Fiesole were heard as his name was read out over the loudspeaker before kick-off against Cagliari — the game where he scored a free kick but left the penalty in front of the ultras to Biraghi.
In Venice a few days later, the Fiorentina players went over to toss the travelling fans their shirts in apology for a 1-0 defeat. Vlahovic came in for abuse. He was called a hunchback — the derogatory name Fiorentina fans give to anyone associated with Juventus — amid the suspicion Juve are preparing to lure him to Turin, just as they did Chiesa and Federico Bernardeschi.
Vlahovic was led away by Lorenzo Venuti and Biraghi, who defended his team-mate on DAZN.
“Dusan is the same guy he’s always been,” the wing-back said. “I’ve known him for five years. There isn’t a problem with Vlahovic. We went over to the fans who have travelled miles and miles to support us. We decided to give them our jerseys, seeing as we couldn’t given them a win. The defeat hurts. We could have done more.”
What, then, to make of Vlahovic’s gesture against Milan? Did he really mean he is staying and if so, for how long? He had a contract offer, after all. Equally, it may well be the case that the gesture was misinterpreted, self-serving or meant nothing.
Reluctantly, Fiorentina are having to prepare for life without him. Atletico Madrid wanted Vlahovic last summer and The Athletic understands four Premier League clubs were sounded out in the middle last month. The price in January is €80 million (£67.3 million) — and that was before his goals at the weekend.
Selling him would be especially hard to swallow when Fiorentina look like they might return to European competition for the first time in four years under Vincenzo Italiano, whose reputation as the brightest young coach in Serie A undergoes further enhancement. Fiorentina are on the up, which makes all this bittersweet. Better perhaps to identify a buyer this winter who would be prepared to loan him back until the end of the season.
When Batistuta left for Roma in 2000, the fans melted down his statue. But when the anger subsided, they did not begrudge him the move.
He had spent almost a decade at the club and even went down to the second division with them. The Argentinian got the Viola back up to the top flight and did everything in his power to deliver the title they had been craving since 1969, coming closest on the 40th anniversary of that scudetto only for an untimely injury and Edmundo’s selfish decision to fly off to the Rio carnival to derail the team.
The hope was Vlahovic might be Fiorentina’s new ‘Batigol’, or at least give them a few more years.
But with Haaland’s Borussia Dortmund release clause about to kick in next summer and Mbappe’s contract up at Paris Saint-Germain, the upcoming transfer windows will be defined by the striker sweepstakes, and he will undoubtedly be one of the most coveted on the market.
Vlahovic can score every type of goal and is available for €80m – no wonder English clubs are interested
By James Horncastle Nov 24, 202119
What was Dusan Vlahovic trying to say? After scoring his 27th Serie A goal of the calendar year, a number surpassed only by Robert Lewandowski in Europe’s top five leagues, he celebrated by pointing downwards as if to say, “The Artemio Franchi is my home.” Whether he meant the gesture to signify that on a foggy Saturday night in Florence was unclear.
Serie A’s reigning young player of the year was fresh from qualifying for next year’s World Cup as his Serbia side upset Portugal 2-1 in Lisbon. Now he was upstaging Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Anything the AC Milan striker tried, Vlahovic could do better.
They had swapped shirts after their previous encounter in March. “We lost 3-2, so he wasn’t very angry when I asked him for it,” Vlahovic told DAZN. “Zlatan signed it, we had a photo taken and he wrote a tribute. He told me to keep doing what I’m doing and to never give up.
“I didn’t say much. It’s hard when you meet your idol.”
As they both traipsed down the underpass leading to the dressing rooms, Vlahovic knew he had come out on top this time around. Both of them had scored twice but the winning goal was curled in by the Serb, who ended Milan’s unbeaten start to the Serie A season in an entertaining if error-strewn 4-3 thriller.
Fiorentina haven’t had a player this prolific over a calendar year in more than 60 years, since one of Ibrahimovic’s Swedish forebears Kurt Hamrin — aka “The Little Bird” — was swooping around the Franchi. That was an era when the goals-per-game average in Serie A was similar to today, a more innocent time before Nereo Rocco and Helenio Herrera locked up the league’s defences and established catenaccio as the pre-eminent ideology in Italian football. It resisted for decades, which is why goals became so hard to come by and Gabriel Batistuta’s numbers for the club in the 1990s carry more weight.
Naturally, it’s to ‘Batigol’ that all Fiorentina strikers are compared. That was the case with Luca Toni when he became the first Italian to win the European Golden Shoe in 2006 and it’s true of Vlahovic now. The number of goals — 40 for club and country since the start of last season — is impressive enough, even if 11 have come from the penalty spot. Look around Europe and only Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe have more club goals in that time among forwards who were under the age of 23 at the start of 2021-22.
What truly astounds is the variety to the 21-year-old Vlahovic’s finishing.
Let’s kick off with the spectacular.
Here, Vlahovic takes down a long punt from goalkeeper Bartlomiej Dragowski, who isn’t expecting his hoof upfield to become an assist…
… but Vlahovic adroitly nudges the ball inside, drives at the Benevento defence and curls one into the top corner.
That jaw-dropping goal completed a first-half hat-trick and if you were to flick through the calcio almanacs looking for the last Fiorentina player to score one of those, your finger would once again stop on a line next to that man Hamrin’s name.
To find someone more precocious than Vlahovic to hit a hat-trick for them, you have to go back to 1983 and Paolo Monelli, who famously scored from his own half against Napoli.
Staying outside the box, the Uffizi-worthy free kick Vlahovic recently whipped by Cagliari’s Alessio Cragno rivals the Benevento strike above as his best goal for the club. Vlahovic usually defers to Cristiano Biraghi on set pieces and hadn’t scored one of these in before in Serie A. “Today, we swapped,” Biraghi said. “I took the penalty (usually Vlahovic’s preserve). He took the free kicks.”
Both ended up scoring but the incident remained a source of curiosity.
Serie A’s apparently on-demand team of lip readers claimed to have seen Vlahovic tell Biraghi, “I don’t feel like it,” as they lingered over the spot. The penalty was in front of the Curva Fiesole, where the Fiorentina ultras stand and you’d think the crowd would suck the goal in. Why pass it up?
Biraghi downplayed the affair, insisting there was nothing more to it other than a one-off role reversal.
It just so happened the free kick was made to look as simple as a penalty by Vlahovic, for whom even the hardest of finishes appear straightforward.
Take this glancing header as another example. High in difficulty, the cross was fired in powerfully and seemed to be going behind the 6ft 3in Vlahovic, who contorted his neck enough to direct it into the far corner.
As for his winning goal in Naples, a place Fiorentina hadn’t left with all three points in six years, Vlahovic took on his man, driving the defender back into the penalty area before using his opponent’s body to obscure his intention from the goalkeeper, which was to find an angle inside the far post.
Vlahovic’s ability to carry the ball, often from great distances, beat defenders for pace, hold them off and hide the ball long enough to get off a shot has also distinguished his play over the last year.
Look at the clock in the top left-hand corner of this next screengrab. Vlahovic has played more than 90 minutes against the champions-elect and the best defence in Italy, yet he runs at Inter Milan centre-backs Stefan de Vrij and Milan Skriniar and still has the lucidity to keep his wits about him and score after making a gut-busting dash from his own half.
Another of the goals in this subsection of Vlahovic’s repertoire will almost certainly live longer in the memory of the Fiorentina supporters who were there to see it in Turin.
Unlike the run against Inter above, this one came right at the start of a game rather than at the end of one, but goals against Juventus are cherished like no other at Fiorentina.
Franck Ribery’s pass gave Vlahovic a head start on Matthijs de Ligt, who is no slouch and matches Federico Chiesa stride-for-stride in training. But even he couldn’t stop Vlahovic from going on to score from here and open his account at the Allianz Stadium, on a day when Fiorentina would win 3-0.
It was their biggest margin of victory away to the Old Lady since 1955 and promised to make Vlahovic a hero in Florence.
Understandably, Fiorentina wished to reward him and began preparing a new contract beyond the one currently tying him to the club until 2023. Anyone could see Vlahovic was a player to build around, just as Batistuta had been for Vittorio Cecchi Gori 25 years ago.
Owner Rocco Commisso and the executive team at Fiorentina worked on a deal and believed they had one agreed. Vlahovic was to become the highest-paid player in club history. Adjusted for inflation or not, the intention was to put him in the same bracket as Batistuta, Rui Costa, Toni and Mario Gomez (fear not if you have no memory of the latter’s forgettable spell this side of the Campo Marte train tracks).
The Athletic understands Vlahovic was offered a new five-year deal worth €3.5 million per season that would become €4 million annually if he met a series of easily achievable performance-related targets. Haggling ensued over a release clause — the club suggested €100 million and the agents working for Vlahovic countered with €60 million before they agreed to meet in the middle.
Everything seemed to be progressing well.
After the final game before the end of the transfer window, a 2-1 win sealed by the Vlahovic header pictured above, the player said on Sky Italia: “I never pushed to leave despite some very big offers coming in for me and the club.” The impression given was of a player who wished to stay.
So it came as an unpleasant and embittering surprise when the tremendous effort Fiorentina had made to retain Vlahovic was not deemed good enough.
This is an ambitious club with owners fighting to reform Serie A.
It means sustainability. It means weaning the league off debt and building new stadiums that can drive the kind of revenues that permit teams to buy the best and keep the best players in Italy. It means better regulation, whether that’s capping agent fees in line with the proposals FIFA are making to prevent another €138 million leaving Serie A in commissions as was the case over the past year, not to mention enforcing financial fair play.
For now, though, meaningful change to the Italian football landscape is yet to come.
During the October international break, owner Commisso offered the definitive update on the situation in a statement saying: “As you know, Fiorentina made a very significant offer to the player. Our proposal would have made him the highest-paid player in the history of the club. We also improved our offer on a number of occasions in order to accommodate the requests of both Dusan and his entourage. However, despite our efforts, those offers have not been accepted.
“I have endeavoured to find a solution that would make both the player and the club happy, but I am disappointed to say that our efforts and attempts have not been rewarded. At this point, all that we can do is acknowledge the wishes of the player and his entourage and quickly identify feasible, appropriate solutions as we proceed with this exciting new season.”
When Vlahovic returned from his role in Serbia’s World Cup qualifiers that month, the first whistles from the Fiesole were heard as his name was read out over the loudspeaker before kick-off against Cagliari — the game where he scored a free kick but left the penalty in front of the ultras to Biraghi.
In Venice a few days later, the Fiorentina players went over to toss the travelling fans their shirts in apology for a 1-0 defeat. Vlahovic came in for abuse. He was called a hunchback — the derogatory name Fiorentina fans give to anyone associated with Juventus — amid the suspicion Juve are preparing to lure him to Turin, just as they did Chiesa and Federico Bernardeschi.
Vlahovic was led away by Lorenzo Venuti and Biraghi, who defended his team-mate on DAZN.
“Dusan is the same guy he’s always been,” the wing-back said. “I’ve known him for five years. There isn’t a problem with Vlahovic. We went over to the fans who have travelled miles and miles to support us. We decided to give them our jerseys, seeing as we couldn’t given them a win. The defeat hurts. We could have done more.”
What, then, to make of Vlahovic’s gesture against Milan? Did he really mean he is staying and if so, for how long? He had a contract offer, after all. Equally, it may well be the case that the gesture was misinterpreted, self-serving or meant nothing.
Reluctantly, Fiorentina are having to prepare for life without him. Atletico Madrid wanted Vlahovic last summer and The Athletic understands four Premier League clubs were sounded out in the middle last month. The price in January is €80 million (£67.3 million) — and that was before his goals at the weekend.
Selling him would be especially hard to swallow when Fiorentina look like they might return to European competition for the first time in four years under Vincenzo Italiano, whose reputation as the brightest young coach in Serie A undergoes further enhancement. Fiorentina are on the up, which makes all this bittersweet. Better perhaps to identify a buyer this winter who would be prepared to loan him back until the end of the season.
When Batistuta left for Roma in 2000, the fans melted down his statue. But when the anger subsided, they did not begrudge him the move.
He had spent almost a decade at the club and even went down to the second division with them. The Argentinian got the Viola back up to the top flight and did everything in his power to deliver the title they had been craving since 1969, coming closest on the 40th anniversary of that scudetto only for an untimely injury and Edmundo’s selfish decision to fly off to the Rio carnival to derail the team.
The hope was Vlahovic might be Fiorentina’s new ‘Batigol’, or at least give them a few more years.
But with Haaland’s Borussia Dortmund release clause about to kick in next summer and Mbappe’s contract up at Paris Saint-Germain, the upcoming transfer windows will be defined by the striker sweepstakes, and he will undoubtedly be one of the most coveted on the market.
Isn't Jonathan David better value for money striker, doubt he'd cost €80m? Moreover, Jonathan s unlikely to encounter a language barrier
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Look. We need to right the wrong of our last Serbian transfer. Sign him up i say
Happen to see this article this week:
Jonathan David is emerging as an elite striker at Lille. Where will he go next?
[article]With Liverpool apparently interested and Inter reportedly lining up a bid for January – Lille will want a fee surpassing the £25m they paid for his services – this is increasingly likely to be David’s final season at Lille. However, despite his obvious ability, the uncertainty about his best position could give clubs pause. He is strong and capable of bringing others into play, often dropping off to play as a second striker, but David is not yet wholly suited to the lone forward role used by many bigger clubs. He also lacks the one-on-one skills of top-level wingers and has been less effective when used wide. Elements of his game could be compared to Wissam Ben Yedder, or perhaps Luis Suárez. David’s time playing in Ottawa’s tight domes draws parallels with Ben Yedder’s futsal experience – both players have sharp control and protect the ball well.
At Lille, thanks to Christophe Galtier’s strict 4-4-2 – which has been replicated by new manager Jocelyn Gourvennec – David has been used almost exclusively in a front two. The role suits his unusual skillset perfectly, giving him the freedom to drop off into space in support of his partner or play on the shoulder of a defender. However, his tight control and sharp interplay means David is at his best when playing close to teammates. Inter’s 3-5-2 could be an ideal fit, but he may struggle to find a niche elsewhere. As David said himself before joining Lille: “I don’t want to go somewhere and just stay on the bench. It’s about taking the right step.”
However, judging by his steep trajectory, David’s ceiling is high. Without Galtier, Lille have not performed as well as they did last season but David has been one of few players to keep progressing, along with Sven Botman and Tiago Djaló. When he arrived at the club he was nervous and unable to impact games, but he is now full of swagger. David uses possession intelligently and his finishing has become much more considered. Another year or two in the right environment could make all the difference for David as he looks to take that next step and become an elite striker.
Whether playing on the bustling streets of Port-au-Prince, in the freezing domes of Ottawa, or in congested Ligue 1 penalty areas, space has always been at a premium for David. Soon or later, though, as his talent truly blossoms, it will be the space left by David in Gourvennec’s team that will become the problem for Lille.[/article]
I have not seen, but sounds a lot like Firmino, who plays well in tight spaces with Salah and Mané close by.
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Binny. Love your work. Absolutely stellar stuff. But please don't link anything to The Lying Rag mate.
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Opps, my bad 😳, I overlooked the details in that tweet
No worries pal. Keep up the good work. Hope you're well by the way?
Thanks, mate (esp. for all The Athletic articles). I have been on a short break these 2 weeks and resuming work next month.
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