Zvoneontology
Primavera
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2020
- Messages
- 215
- Reaction score
- 1,294
By available, I meant that he was ready to leave his previous club, Brugge. At the end of the 2021/22 season, he was ready to close the chapter on his time at Brugge and take the next big step of his career. He had pretty much achieved everything that could be achieved at Brugge - 3 consecutive domestic league titles (their first 3-peat since the 1970s), 3 Champions League seasons in a row. His ambitions and aspirations had outgrown the club. He was ready to leave and move on; there was little motivation for him to stay on beyond that season.
Once we knew that he was available for a transfer, and expressed our interest to sign him, and that interest was reciprocated back; the decision to prioritize a CAM signing was pretty much made for us then. It was our best shot at getting not only one of our long-time desired transfer targets, but also a player with the potential to finally solve our CAM problem. The 2022 summer transfer season was our best window of opportunity to finally get this highly rated young promising player that we had followed, scouted, and wanted for quite some time. Not only was he available, he strongly only wanted to come to us and outrightly rejected other interested clubs. He was determined to be a Milan player and made every effort for it to happen, including reducing his wages to better facilitate the move. If we hadn't shown any interest, he'd have most likely left for the Premiership. Leeds were the other club that made a strong concerted effort to get him. They were even prepared to pay more for him than what we ended up paying. While they may not be as appealing as us, Leeds had an ambitious and promising project - built on the backs of young promising players too - going on at the time. They could've swayed him then, especially if we weren't quite in the picture as one of the clubs interested in him. He'd have been a major signing for them, and a strong statement of ambitious intent to reclaim their place among the English football elite. If he had gone there and succeeded, some of you would probably have moaned: "Why didn't we get this Belgian kid when we had the chance? What a missed opportunity! We were his first preference and he desperately wanted to play for us. He could have been our CAM/no. 10 for many many years, and finally solved our CAM problem that we haven't fixed since Hakan left."
There was definitely a sense of urgency about our pursuit of De Ketelaere, at least on two counts: (i) an urgency to not miss out on one of Europe's biggest and most promising young creative talents; (ii) an urgency to address the CAM position, one of our high priority key positions (like RW) that badly needed to be fixed/improved/reinforced, especially for the long-term – in other words, an urgency to not miss out on a player that could potentially set us up for good as our CAM for many years to come. If we had failed in our efforts to get him, that could mean failure on so many levels. Failure to (yet again) address a major key position (CAM) that badly needed to be improved. Failure to address one of the team's technical shortcomings (lack of overall creativity and passing talent). Failure to get a player with the potential to be a cornerstone of the club's future. Failure to continue building on the project of young players that could grow together and form a strong foundational backbone/core for the club's present and future. The stakes were pretty high enough and the urgency to not fail was certainly there.
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I wont play along...
