Charles De Ketelaere of Atalanta

CaughtOffside: Arteta wants De Ketelaere at Arsenal – what it means for Milan

Photo by Alessandro Sabattini/Getty Images

Charles De Ketelaere has certainly relaunched his career following his move to Atalanta from AC Milan, and he is attracting interest from Arsenal and other Premier League clubs, as per a report.

According to what is being reported by CaughtOffside, Arsenal are one of a number of clubs keeping an eye on De Ketelaere given his rejuvenation since swapping red and black for black and blue last summer.

Arsenal head coach Mikel Arteta is ‘a big admirer of De Ketelaere’, while other sides like Manchester City, Tottenham, Newcastle United and West Ham ‘have also been watching the 23-year-old’ during his time with La Dea.

There have not been any approaches made by these clubs yet, but the Gunners will decide internally whether to launch a move for De Ketelaere or Georgiy Sudakov, who is also a target for the creative midfielder role.

West Ham ‘could be a surprise name to watch’ when it comes to the Belgian because they consider him to be a possible replacement for Lucas Paqueta or Mohammed Kudus, if they are forced to sell one or both.

 

What does it mean for Milan? Well, in addition to seeing a talent blossom that they spent over €30m on, several sources have claimed that the club secured a 10% resale clause meaning they would get that amount of any future proceeds from a sale.

There were, however, also reports which claimed that De Ketelaere’s move hasn’t been made permanent just yet and that it will become one next year due to accounting reasons.

Tags AC Milan Charles De Ketelaere

18 Comments

  1. In many ways Maldini & Co were unlucky in the summer 22/23.

    The signings they made all made sense.

    After winning the Scudetto they signed:

    – an up and coming CB, Thiaw, to add to the Kalulu and Tomori Scudetto winning partnership, and Kjaer.

    – CDK as cover and eventual replacement for Brahim;

    – Premier and Champions League winner Origi who could play across multiple positions upfront.

    They also brought in a couple of loanees:
    – Dest to cover both sides at FB;
    – They took a punt on Vranckx – and this was the big mistake.

    They needed to sign a replacement for Kessie. And Vranckx wasn’t that.

    But anyway the seasons started well, CDK started well, and we continued our Scudetto winning form until we suffered an unlucky defeat to eventual Scudetto winners, Napoli, and then…..collapsed against Roma in Round 17 and that was when the wheels came off (but we still made it to the semi-finals of the Champions League and finished 4th (FOURTH. FOURTH. FOURTH).

    And then…..

    AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

    They freaked out!!!!

    AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

    Maldini gone.
    Massara gone.
    Revenue guy gone.
    Tonali gone.
    Saelemaekers gone
    CDK gone.

    A bit of an overreaction?

    Curiously not Pioli gone….until the following season when he finished 2nd (SECOND!).

    And then

    AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

    AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

    AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

    1. Vranckx is actually not bad. He gets called up for Belgium all the time and is still young at 22. He’s not a Kessie replacement but he can play the pivot. It was his mistake against Roma that cost him his career at Milan but he was very young. All the purported faith in young players really mean buy for cheap and hope they do well so as to cash in on them later on.
      Also, glad you mentioned Origi as people forgot why he was brought. As you said, can play multiple positions and is actually a big game player off the bench. One of the best in the Prem actually off the bench..plus he had experience at a high level in Europe. Were the wages high? Yes. And too bad it didn’t work out but the signings like you said made sense. How to gain players without rocking the boat too much..

      1. Huh, whaaaaat???? Do you actually think that Origi is good? He is one of the worst players I’ve ever seen playing the sport, in several decades I’ve been watching the sport. Injury-prone reject, useless bum. To pretend that signing Origi and giving him a 4M salary was a smart move, has my head shaking. You usually have good opinions, IKWYDLS, so I’m quite surprised at this post of yours.

        1. No no, that’s not what I’m saying. He wasn’t good for us for sure but he was good for Liverpool. He’s actually very good at coming off the bench when he played in the Prem (there was an article I read some time ago which compared the best bench players in the Prem and he’s quite up there) so I was saying I understand the line of thinking. We needed an impact player off the bench with experience + free 🤷‍♂️. U know we love free lol. But obviously he flopped so badly..that’s not up for debate. Worse yet the wage packet we gave him and his terrible attitude smh 🤦‍♂️. Definitely one of our worst acquisitions as it panned out.

          1. The big mistake with Origi was giving him a 4 year contract and such a high salary. It made it impossible to dispose of him once we found out he was a flop. Had we given him something like a 2 years contract and way less money, his story with us would already been over.
            I disagree with Maldini’s Heir about the 22/23 summer. It’s true that this whole renewal thing of M&M delayed our transfers and the budget was really small (50M€), but when you have such a small budget, you don’t spend 70% of it on a single young, unproven player from a weak league who doesn’t even play in the position we asked him to play in (CDK). We could have gotten Paolo Dybala for free and use that money on other players. We could have gone for Morten Hjulmand as a pivot and Ricardo Orsolini (who went on to score 11 goals and 4 assists that season) to reinforce the right wing and still have a bit of money.
            All the players I’ve named have serie A experience and are/were better than the ones we ended up with in 2022/23.

          2. Yes. I could see your point Giga especially about blowing most of the budget on CDK. But recall that there was some additional elements to that purchase. First, M&M didn’t want the club to be perceived as being weak, hence the hard push for the player and not being outbid by smaller clubs stature-wise from the Prem. Second, CDK wasn’t really the main target, it was Botman. That probably would have been money better spent. Also totally agree on the salary packet we gave him. Its hard to move him on. In regards to Dybala, Maldini said as much that the uppers didn’t want him as he was “too old”. Maldini was just following the path the owners themselves set out. But I would have tried to convince them if Dybala over Origi for instance (and not because of hindsight, just becyof talent).
            As for Boulden, don’t even know why I’m doing this but I’ll try. I dont know how much football you watch but Origi is a cult hero at Pool in case you didn’t know. It’s not the quantity of goals, it’s the meaning behind the goals. His goal against Barca was voted by Pool fans as the greatest ever goal in their 130 year history beating out the goals scored in Istanbul against us. That goal directly led them to their 6 UCL title. There were numerous times he came off the bench to clinch very important goals for the club. Hence I understood why they acquired him. That’s all I’m saying.

        2. Hello Mr Hindsight…

          Origi’s signing made sense at the time given his pedigree and his characteristics.

          Obviously it didn’t work out.

          But it really does amuse me when people talk about his wasted salary like it was only 4m that’s every been wasted by Milan/a football team/on the modern transfer market.

          I mean people regularly write off players who we spent 20-30-40m on.

          I haven’t done a survey but I’d say the majority of football transfers end in failure.

          As in the player fails to produce the same or better form at his new club.

          That is because the conditions that enabled that player to produce the same or better form at his OLD club are very difficult to recreate.

          Even Messi struggled to produce his Barca form away from Barca including for the National team and at PSG.

          This is the thing that is so stupid about the modern rating system.

          This assumption that this or that player is somehow ‘better’.

          When dealing with the top 1% of footballers on the planet there isn’t this huge gap between the different levels.

          Other factors have a bigger impact.

          Chemistry with the coach and team mates, training methods, formations, and, yes, luck.

          Luck to avoid injuries, to score from that rebound.

          I said above how CDK seemed to be involved in about 10 goal mouth scrambles that he didn’t score from. That was pure misfortune.

          If you believe in the multiverse there’s probably a parallel universe where CDK scores from any of those rebounds and the rest is history!

      2. Yeah Vranckx was an interesting signing and worth a punt because…we had a midfield (minus Kessie).

        Not replacing Kessie was the thing that probably cost us (as well Pioli basically giving up on Serie A and banking the Juve points deduction to focus on the Champions League).

        If only….

        – Kalulu and Tomori not suffered dips in form and injuries
        – CDK had scored from any one of the goal mouth scrambles he was involved in;
        – Origi reproduced 50% of what he did at Liverpool;
        – Napoli not had a record breaking season…

        things might have worked out differently.

        And they still didn’t work out too bad if everyone had just calmed down!

        1. I would say you have too much time in your life. Since we are there, what do you think would have happened if Cesar wasn’t murdered on March 15, 44 BC iin Curia di Pompeo, Rome, Italy?

  2. It means Pioli is, was and will always be a below average coach. And the current management is a bunch of braindead m0r0ns.
    Arteta turns young players into beasts. I mean goddamn, Odegaard has turned into a fre@king monster.. and Pioli, turns GOOD Players into utter garbage.

    How many of Pioli’s underperformers overachieved in other clubs ? at least 6. Adli, Saele, CDK, Gabbia, Hakan, Brahim comes to my mind. We can add Hauge to the list now as well.

  3. CDK and Paqueta were the second and third most expensive players in Maldini’s era as a sporting director. Both deals had a veto from the management because they exceeded the ceiling transfer fee set by the strict management’s weather Elliot or Redbird. The two players have huge talent which reflects on the success Paqueta has in the Premier League and CDK form since joining Atlanta. Their unsuccessful spill was mainly due to the failure of Pioli to know how to use them tactically. The management still failed of hiring a proper coach after Pioli’s Sacking which reflected on the poor start of the team this season and the terrible summer mercato.
    The clown management has to starting from Cardinale down to Moncada

  4. Funny how the Milan YouTube channel posts videos of past greats like Ronaldinho/Ronaldo/Rui Costa/Shevchenko etc.,

    None of those players would be considered for signing per the strategy employed by the current management. We were considered an underdog in the match against Leverkusen. We are the new Leverkusen in the Champions League i.e., a team like Liverpool will call us a strong team in pre match interviews, but they know losing to us is beneath them.

  5. I told everyone this kid will end up in Man City. And he probably will. Only Milan gets rid of a player like this with a loss because they have idiots in management.

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