This summer has seen the introduction of the ‘transfer hijack’, where a club attempts to derail a seemingly dead-cert transfer for a player by a rival club by improving on their offer; we’ve now suffered from this phenomenon on two separate occasions with young players who were all-but Arsenal players until shock u-turns.
Ricky Alvarez:
After being linked to Arsenal, eccentric Palermo president Maurizio Zamparini shocked Gunners worldwide by proclaiming that his interest in Ricky Alvarez was in vain:
“Alvarez of Velez? We had a specific interest we had in hand as early as January. Unfortunately, we were mistaken – we did a quick run and at the moment the player has already signed for Arsenal.” Zamparini said.
Zamparini was immediately doubted due to his less than honourable past conduct and this doubt turned out to be well founded when it was confirmed that Alvarez had signed for £10.4 million on a five-year deal for Inter Milan after seemingly being a dead-cert to play in an Arsenal shirt – Alavarez scored a brace on his debut for the Italian club who improved on our offer for the player by a minimal amount in terms of transfer fee but immensely in terms of wages (as Italy has more favourable tax rates).
Joel Campbell
Another player who defaulted on Arsenal at the very last-minute is Joel Campbell, who many believed (we said it was 90% likely to happen two days ago) had signed for Arsenal after agreeing a $1.5 million fee with Deportivo Saprissa for his services – however, it came out Manchester United and Dynamo Kiev had both improved on our offer for the player.
Rather than negotiating after the U-20 World Cup as he had previously wanted to, the player’s father Humberto decided to not turn up for a meeting which led Arsenal to end any interest in the player. Saprissa president Juan Carlos Rojas was all for the move and gave a good indictment of Arsenal’s conduct:
“It’s disappointing for football, for Saprissa and me they [the Campbells] have decided not to take an offer from as serious and first class people like Arsenal – I hope things go well for Joel. I assume that the father thinks things will get better after the decision, but hey, there’s always a risk and it is a pity that the Costa Rican football team could not have a player at Arsenal at the moment.” said Rojas.
Let’s hope that pulling out of these moves turns out to be the right decision in the long-term, a scenario made more poignant in the backdrop of another North London club signing Ivorian starlet Souleymane Coulibaly.
Submitted by clockendview – just another Arsenal blog
