🤔 Who’s on The Athletic’s Radar?
🙋 Salah wants one more year
😥 Inside Man City’s misery
🧌 Zaniolo trolls Roma
Hot property: Who are the most coveted players in Europe?
Getty Images/Design: Eamonn Dalton
Last week, TAFC brought you The Athletic’s 2025 DealSheet, the inside track on how clubs intend to tweak their squads in the year ahead. Today, we’re going more granular again with our 2025 Transfer Radar, a catwalk of the 25 most sought-after players in Europe.
Think of this as being less about the January window than 2025 as a whole, because a lot of the assets in our list are too prized to be allowed to pack up and go mid-season. I’ve taken my pick of three names in three categories: players who should be looking to move, clubs who should be looking to sell, and emerging talent which should get better.
To the first batch, the footballers who might have itchy feet:
⭐ Florian Wirtz (Bayer Leverkusen). Respect to him and Leverkusen manager Xabi Alonso for giving the club another year after their Bundesliga title miracle but there’s a ceiling at Leverkusen, and Wirtz is a No 10 with world-class pedigree. His game would suit the Premier League’s best.
⭐ Martin Zubimendi (Real Sociedad). Likewise, his Basque loyalty to La Real is admirable but, competitively, he’s so much better than mid-table in La Liga. Saying no to Liverpool once did him credit. Say no to a big move too many times, and the boat might sail. He’s 26 in February.
⭐ Nico Williams (Athletic Club). A star of Euro 2024 and, in the same way as Zubimendi, another who must be tempted to strike out while his stock is high. Athletic are having a tidy season in Spain’s La Liga but how far can the Bilbao side take him, really? I’d be wading into that £46m ($58m) release clause.
Time to cash in?
Clubs who master the transfer market are astute in knowing when to sell as well as when to buy. A few teams in Europe — below the very top tier of Champions League sides — will be conscious of striking the right balance:
⭐ Viktor Gyokeres (Sporting CP). He’s an avenue to big spondulicks for Portugal’s league leaders, but he won’t be forever. The time to take advantage of his ridiculous goalscoring is coming.
⭐ Jonathan David (Lille). Every time he goes away with Canada, he gets asked about his next move. The forward’s deal at Lille is up in a little over six months so I’d keep very close tabs on him in January.
⭐ Omar Marmoush (Eintracht Frankfurt). Either Marmoush’s flourishing goalscoring at 25 is a sign of things to come, or it’s a flash in the plan. If it’s the latter, Eintracht have a smallish window in which to make the biggest profit on him.
Young stars
And what about the deals for tomorrow, the players who can grow in time?
⭐ Xavi Simons (RB Leipzig). OK, he’s already doing it for RB Leipzig, on loan from Paris Saint-Germain, but he’s fresh at 21 and I’ve always been impressed by the way he manages the hype around him.
⭐ Jorrel Hato (Ajax). Scouts love a nifty ball-playing defender. The 18-year-old is one of those, and Ajax’s financial position is far from rock solid.
⭐ Endrick (Real Madrid). He’s had all of 66 La Liga minutes with Real Madrid so far, and we reckon the 18-year-old will soon be available on loan. The only thing I’d suggest: he’s too much of an unknown quantity for Premier League teams to give him a whirl.
News round-upCity crisis: Inside Premier League champions’ downturn
Getty Images; design: Dan Goldfarb
Yesterday’s TAFC podcast devoted itself to analysing crumbling Manchester City, and our beat writer Sam Lee was spot on with this comment: Pep Guardiola won’t want to demean himself by asking the crowd to bear with him while he gets a grip, but he clearly needs time to draw breath and regroup.
Danny Taylor has taken the story on today by getting deeper into City’s crisis. His piece contains some eye-catching lines: City’s first teamers losing a nine-versus-nine practice match to an academy line-up last week, Guardiola shutting himself away in his office but also losing his rag after their 4-0 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur. It’s all a classic of the crisis genre.
Pretty pertinent too is the revelation that Guardiola directed City to delay overhauling their squad until 2025, something he and the club must be regretting now. A rebuild looks sorely overdue and at the level City operate at, transfer-based resets require patience and lots of money. The club won’t wallow forever but I don’t think we should anticipate a quick return to normal service either.
Bove relief: Fiorentina star ‘awake and alert’
The footage of Fiorentina’s Edoardo Bove collapsing on the pitch against Inter on Sunday in Italy’s Serie A — which we won’t re-publish here — is incredibly scary. One minute he’s tying a boot lace, the next he’s dropping to the ground, with players close to him realising immediately that something is badly wrong.
To the relief of everybody, Bove is now “awake and alert” in hospital. He took part in a video call with Fiorentina’s squad and persuaded them to go ahead with an Italian Cup tie against Empoli tomorrow. But James Horncastle’s take on Bove’s scare leaves no doubt about the trauma caused by Sunday’s events.
It’s easily forgotten, too, that Fiorentina are only six years on from losing former captain Davide Astori to a heart condition in his sleep the night before a match. Astori was only 31 and his death was devastating.
Show Viz
The art of winning a penalty is often taken to mean the art of cheating. There’s stigma attached to the concept of ‘winning’ a spot-kick. It implies craftiness or subterfuge. You dirty diver… etc.
There was no cheating on the part of Evanilson, though, when he earned three penalties for Bournemouth on Saturday (all scored by Justin Kluivert) and given that the number of awards has dropped to its lowest level in Premier League history this season, knowing the tricks of that trade is vital.
Mark Carey got thinking about it and made a good point. Shouldn’t winning a penalty count as an assist if the spot kick is converted? Because, presently, it doesn’t and while Kluivert made history, Evanilson’s hand in it won’t be remembered — even though he was arguably doing the hard part.
Around The Athletic FCCatch a match
(Selected games)
Premier League: Ipswich Town vs Crystal Palace, 2.30pm/7.30pm — Peacock Premium/Amazon Prime; Leicester City vs West Ham United, 3.15pm/8.15pm — USA Network, Fubo/Amazon Prime.
La Liga: Mallorca vs Barcelona, 1pm/6pm — ESPN+, Fubo/Premier Sports.
German DFB Pokal, last 16: Bayern Munich vs Bayer Leverkusen, 2.45pm/7.45pm – ESPN+, Fubo/Premier Sports.
And finally…
Nicolo Zaniolo was once Roma’s golden boy. But then it went sour. In 2023, he asked to leave. Roma accepted a bid from Bournemouth but Zaniolo turned the offer down. The hacked-off club threatened not to play him, and he exited stage left to Galatasaray.
Last night, he was back at Roma for the first time, on loan at Atalanta from Galatasaray. He scored the second goal in Atalanta’s 2-0 win and gave it laldy with his celebrations (above). Rather than translate the reaction of Roma’s ultras, I’ll leave you to buy a dictionary.
(Photo by Gualter Fatia/Getty Images)
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Publish date : 2024-12-03 04:47:00
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