Arsenal finally get their man

Football gets rolling before the opening ceremonies at the Olympics, with the men’s football tournament starting on Wednesday, and the women’s on Thursday. Despite taking place at the same event, they’re two completely different tournaments, and therefore interesting for completely different reasons.

The men’s tournament has been fraught with fights about player releases over the years, with national teams finally fully conceding this cycle and, for the most part, allowing clubs to withdraw whoever they wanted. The result is squads filled with players who are not exactly in the ascendancy in their careers.

If you browse through the men’s Olympic squads you’ll see a lot of guys who were once touted as the next big thing, but have failed to make the jump to elite senior football in their late teens and early 20s. There are myriad players coming off failed loans or big injuries. Almost every team is an Island Of Misfit Toys.

All of this makes the men’s football tournament at the Olympics less appealing for casual fans, but the circumstances should make the tournament more appealing for club scouts. What a blessing it is to get to see a bunch of players that you don’t have good tape and data for in an extremely competitive setting.

Perhaps the likes of Manchester City and Real Madrid shouldn’t care much, but the world of football outside of the top 5% of clubs always needs to be looking for undervalued talent in unexpected places. Some players who the world of elite men’s football considered to be cooked are going to re-emerge during this tournament as intriguing prospects for teams in the tier just below.

That’s not to say I’m recommending that a team should sign a player based on their performance in the Olympics. I hope we all know by now how silly that is. But it should lead to a lot of new players getting on the radars of scouts and directors of football, so their club performances next season will be tracked closely. It could be the piece of tape that gets someone a loan that jumpstarts their career.

It’s very likely that the Olympics will turn around the careers of a few players whose careers have been on a downwards trajectory, and personally I think that’s very cool.

The women’s tournament is an entirely different thing altogether.

Unlike the men, there’s no U-23 age restriction. Only 12 teams qualify, so there are no poor sides. Everyone has brought their best possible squad. It’s the best teams in the world fighting for one of the biggest honors on their side of the sport. Winning the Olympic gold medal in women’s football is an honor on par with winning a World Cup, and arguably harder to accomplish, since there’s no such thing as an easy draw.

I’m really looking forward to seeing how the U.S. evolves under Emma Hayes. If the host nation France has improved with Herve Renard getting a full year with the team. If Spain is still the clear best team in the world. Every game in Group C — with Spain, Japan, Brazil and Nigeria — should be nuts.

The contrast between the men and women should keep things really refreshing from day-to-day. It’ll be really interesting to watch one tournament where players are fighting to save their careers, and another where almost everyone is at the top of their game.

—KM

News and Rumours

• Sky report the fee for Ricardo Calafiori will be £42M, give or take all the various and sundry add-on clauses that may or may not trigger. We have analysis of what he brings on Episode 5 of our pod, and we like him, with the caveat that he was well-known in Italy last summer on a MUCH smaller deal, and one reason he didn’t move then were “concerns about his knee.” Arsenal’s fullbacks/wide centrebacks have a sterling record of health lately though, so we’re sure it’s nothing to be concerned about.

• Romano is reporting Artem Dovbyk is close to a €40M move to Atletico Madrid. That’s a fairly hefty fee outside the Premier League these days, but I’m curious to see where Girona go from here. I’d also love a Josimar/FootballLeaks breakdown of the insane Joao Felix reported fee (over 100M to Atletico Madrid!) from back in the day. What got paid? Who got paid? Who was left holding the bag?

• Speaking of holding the bag, Mason Mount would be allowed to leave Manchester United this summer if someone were moderately kinda interested in exchanging his contractual rights for money. The problem United have is one that we have talked about for many years now — wages at the top PL clubs are no longer at a level where even good teams in Europe can afford to absorb all of them for players who don’t work out. Thus moving cast-offs to different homes becomes an exercise in pain tolerance for almost everyone involved.
  
  It also hurts that one of the traditional homes for England’s wayward boys (David Moyes) has left the building.

• Speaking of wayward (Scottish) boys, the reported fee for a McTominay is £30M and not a penny less. His contract expires in a year, but United DO have a club opti-HAHAHAHA. Sorry, that was too funny.
  
  This saga will be a lovely bellweather for who is the current “Bigger Sucker” in the English Premier League.

• Speaking of, and circling back… (I promise, we’ll kill this bit after this bullet), Aston Villa are definitely escaping their Moussa Diaby mistake and looking to replace him with… Joao Felix. We have absolutely no idea how that will work out. None. No one does. This is a complete and utter root for chaos transfer.

• Everton fans were baffled and angry that Manchester United moved for Leny Yoro instead of shipping them a Scrooge McDuck money vault in return for prising Jarrad Branthwaite away from the club. Despite teetering on the brink of insolvency due to the long-running takeover saga, Everton are still offering Branthwaite a raise so he’ll keep showing up at Finch Farm every day.

• Brighton are closing in on a final fee for Inter Miami’s Diego Gomez. He lights up the stats playing alongside Messi and Friends, and the rumoured fee is somewhere in the $15-20M range.

• The Tours have begun. Every day is a new list of players forced to go play in extreme heat in the U.S.A. in exchange for goods, services, and a potential late-career MLS contract. Chelsea’s squad list is so large right now that it may take until tour finishes for media outlets to explain who was left out of the tour and why.
  
  Chelsea are set to send Brazilian midfielder Andrey Santos, 20, on loan to Strasbourg again after the end of their USA tour.
  
  Fabrizio’s crew are going to have content for WEEKS. We’re just hoping they sort it all out by the start of the season.

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