Player Focus: Is Falcao an Unnecessary and Impossible Dream for Juventus?
The Old Lady has been known to show her face in Monaco. Her great patron, the late Gianni Agnelli used to own the Villa Leopolda just up the Cote d’Azur in the seaside town of Beaulieu between Nice and the Principality. She liked to have a flutter at the Casino Royale. Some of her bets didn’t come off like that on Thierry Henry. “He was too young when he joined us and too counter-attacking. Not suited to our play,” remembered Juventus’ former general manager Luciano Moggi, who nevertheless sold him onto Arsenal for a profit.
A year later, the Old Lady returned stacking her chips high as she bet 35bn lire on Henry’s former club-mate and international strike partner David Trezeguet. This time she won big. Trezegol would go onto become the most prolific foreign goalscorer in Juventus’ history. Monaco, if you recall, was also the place the deal for Zlatan Ibrahimovic was done a decade ago. The occasion: the Grand Prix.
Yes, it’s a place the Old Lady likes to be seen. And La Gazzetta dello Sport would have you believe she has been there this summer. “Juve knocks for Falcao,” declared the front page of the pink 10 days ago. It seemed like fantacalcio. Silly season. But La Gazzetta have stood by it and are persisting with the link. Could it really happen? It just seems so improbable.
Think about it in these terms. One of the reported reasons Antonio Conte resigned from Juventus - though not the reason - was the sense the club didn’t have the spending capacity to go up another level. A year ago, he lamented how other league champions splashed the cash on elite talent while the Old Lady sought to dine at restaurants where it was €100 a head with €10 in her pocket. Barcelona went out and got Neymar in one of the most expensive transfers ever. Bayern Munich paid Mario Götze’s €37m release clause at Borussia Dortmund. The holders in England, Manchester United signed Marouane Fellaini for £27.5m [though unsurprisingly he didn’t cite that move as one he envied].
Had Conte known Juventus were laying the groundwork for Falcao do you really think he would have left? Of course transfer strategies evolve and this opportunity might not have presented itself at the time he left. But even if Juventus were to have raised the finance for a permanent fee through the sale of either Arturo Vidal or Paul Pogba - something Conte was unwilling to contemplate - how would they pay Falcao’s wages? He takes home between €12m and €14m a year net. That’s more than twice as high as Juventus’ wage ceiling. To further underline that point, Vidal and Carlos Tevez, the club’s highest earners, ‘only’ receive €5m a season after tax. He’d have to take a huge pay cut.
Breaking their cap would not only put Juventus under financial strain it would perhaps also make their best players ask for a raise. La Gazzetta counters that these concerns are not an issue. First, because Juventus would take Falcao on loan for €20m. According to the pink, one way of raising that fee would be by selling the very good Fernando Llorente, who netted 16 times and picked up 5 assists in the league to garner a rating of 7.19 from WhoScored.com last season, to Peter Lim’s nouveau riche Valencia. Signed for nothing from Athletic a year ago, all that money would be profit.
There are a few things to query about this. Why would Monaco allow their star player to leave on loan and presumably pay a significant percentage of his wages [or would a third-party like Doyen, as Gazzetta hypothesise, take care of that]? Falcao did cut a disaffected, unhappy figure before his knee injury last season and it’s hard to keep someone around if they don’t want to be there even if El Tigre’s cage is golden and littered with euros.
Publically he hasn’t given the impression he is disaffected this summer [it seems his representatives may have done instead]. Only two days ago on Monaco’s 90th birthday he tweeted that it was “great to be part of this institution”. He also told Canal + “I’m happy here and I hope to stay.” You could understand his club being pleased to hear that too. Although Falcao still seems to be shaking off the rust after a lengthy spell on the sidelines, he has scored two in three games. His header against Nantes on Sunday clinched victory, ending Monaco’s run of back-to-back defeats.
But is there something below the surface? In whose interest is it to feed these links to the press? Is Falcao really as content as he says he is in Monaco? And what’s the state of play in the Principality? France Football believe Monaco’s priorities have changed. The weekly magazine pointed to owner Dimitry Rybolovlev’s personal circumstances - he has already spent €350m on the club, why should he invest much more. FFP is also on the horizon - James Rodriguez and Emanuel Riviere’s sales were supposedly to cover a loss - while the €50m one-off payment they agreed to in order to exempt the club from France’s tax laws is disputed by several Ligue 1 clubs. Perhaps this has contributed to a loss of interest. Then there’s the £2.7bn settlement he has been ordered to pay in a divorce settlement.
Monaco have also spent an estimated €30m on land for a new state of the art training ground. Dismissing Claudio Ranieri and hiring new coach Leonardo Jardim and his staff is also believed to have cost in the region of €10m. Instead of being run on a Manchester City or Paris Saint-Germain-like model it’s thought they are transitioning to one more like Porto or Atletico Madrid [Falcao’s former clubs]. Unable to attract big crowds and sizeable new revenue streams [they were looking for a new shirt sponsor this summer but had to go back to their old one Fedcom], buying players low and selling them high is perhaps the best option for them to make money.
In that context, a case for liberating yourself from Falcao’s wages can be made. It’s not hard to see why clubs are monitoring the situation. Falcao needs no introduction. A back-to-back Europa League winner, memories of the record 18 goals he scored for Porto en route to glory in that competition live long, as do the 52 goals in 68 league games he struck for Atletico, and the hat-trick against Chelsea in the European Super Cup [in Monaco].
In his last three and a half seasons [let’s exclude the period he was out injured], he has scored with 20.9% of his attempts. When he hits the target he makes the net bulge 45.3% of the time. Comparatively Lionel Messi's figures, for example, are not too dissimilar [with 23.9% for one and 49.2% for the other].
Today’s Gazzetta insists the next 48 hours will be crucial in deciding Falcao’s future. With Tevez, [and] Llorente [still at the club], not to mention new signing Alvaro Morata, aren’t Juventus already well-stocked up front? Shouldn’t more credence instead be given to their interest in a No.10 who can also play out wide like Bayern’s Xherdan Shaqiri considering Max Allegri’s penchant for a trequartista and his plans to shift to either a 4-3-1-2 or a 4-3-3? L’Equipe understands Falcao should stay at Monaco. For Juventus, he is the dream, the Italian papers claim. It costs nothing to do so goes the old saying. Realising this one though would be prohibitively expensive. Surely that makes it one of the impossible variety? Or are we about to find impossible is really nothing?
Should Juventus pursue their apparent interest in Falcao? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below
