AC Milan are looking for a new striker to strengthen the attacking department in view of the second part of the season and it seems that Akor Adams of Montpellier is now the main target.
Adams plays predominantly as a centre-forward, but he can also play as an attacking midfielder or winger. Coming from the Jamba Football Academy, in 2018 he moved to Norwegian side Sogndal, with whom he scored 16 goals in 56 games.
In 2022 he moved to Lillestrøm, where he scored 28 goals in 50 appearances, attracting interest from several European clubs. In 2023 he was purchased by Montpellier for €4.5m, becoming the most expensive new arrival in the history of the French club.
With Montpellier he has already scored seven goals in 12 Ligue 1 matches, confirming himself as one of the most prolific strikers in the league. With the Nigerian U20 national team he participated in the 2019 World Cup, playing two matches without scoring. His market value, according to Transfermarkt, is €8m.
Jonathan David meanwhile is probably better as a second striker or in a two-striker formation. Raised between the youth sectors of Ottawa Gloucester and Ottawa Internationals, in 2018 he was purchased by Gent, with whom he made his professional debut.
With the Belgian team he scored 37 goals in 83 league games, topping the scoring charts in the 2019-20 season. In 2020 he moved to Lille for €27.5m, becoming the most expensive signing in the history of the French club.
With the Lille shirt he won the 2020-21 league title and the 2021 French Super Cup, scoring 63 goals in 155 games. With the Canadian national team – of which he is the second best scorer ever – he participated in a World Cup (2022), a CONCACAF Gold Cup (2019) and two CONCACAF Nations League (2019-2020, 2022-2023). His market value, according to Transfermarkt, is €60m.
A new favourite
According to the latest from Calciomercato.com, Milan are now more likely to go for Akor Adams than Jonathan David, for several reasons. First of all, the cost of the Nigerian would be much lower than that of the Canadian, allowing the Rossoneri to save economic resources to invest in other departments.
Furthermore, Adams would be better suited to Milan’s game, which requires a physical striker who thrives as a solo number nine. Finally, Adams’ current performance is significantly better than that of his Lille colleague as he has seven league goals to David’s three.
For these reasons, Adams appears to be the favourite over David to become Milan’s new striker in January. The management, however, will have to face competition from other teams interested in the Nigerian.
And straight off to the AFCON, what’s the point !!!
What’s bad in signing a player and he goes out there to play in COPA, AFCON or EURO?
The problem with AFCON players is that the tournament is in January is not an official international fixture date and so and overlaps with regular league schedules for all of the European leagues.
At the same time, FIFA requires leagues to release their AFCON players, unlike the Olympic tournament, where players selected for the Olympics are not required to be released by their clubs.
The Copas and Euros are held AFTER the end of the league seasons.
Yep. Unfortunately it makes me want us to stay away from African players. We’ll be missing Chukwueze too.
Adams is not even part of the Super Eagles set up. Nigerian has strikers with better stats at this time. So no bother, he won’t even be invited for the provisional squad because Nigeria has too many strikers that are still jostling to fill just one space beside Osimhen.
I have not watched Montepieller this season, has anyone seen Adams play?
Get En-nesyri from sevilla pls
Well moving away from David to someone physical is a step in the right direction, so let’s hope this is true.
But I thought we hit our limit for non-EU players which is why we didn’t sigh Kamada (because we needed the spot for Chukwueze).
I believe we have one more since RLC is now Eu designated..
Great discussion here. It would be good to find out what this situation actually is, although the implication is that we have an available slot if they’re looking at a non-EU player for January.
“ First of all, the cost of the Nigerian would be much lower than that of the Canadian, allowing the Rossoneri to save economic resources to invest in other departments.”
And there is the reason we are interested in either of these two non-proven players – COST lol. We will always go the cheaper route.
Unfortunately this is the best we can do in a weak winter market. Ya we have to go the cheaper route and try for Adams because both players are gambles and haven’t showed they can consistently score season after season in bigger leagues. So if we are gambling may as well go for the cheaper Adams.
The bottom line is MANAGEMENT screwed up not getting a starting striker in the summer when we had many options and many players that wanted to come (Thurman, Lukaku, Taremi, Openda, etc…) . Instead we went the cheaper route and signed a trash player nobody wanted in Jovic and dropped 28M on Chukwueze who is essentially a backup to Pulisic and who looks like an early bust and 20M on Musah who is also a backup and Okafor for 13M – also a back up at LW. That 48-61M could have bought us a guaranteed goalscorer to replace the 37yr old Giroud (warrior).that should have been the primary goal first – then you sign the backups – not before. So because we didn’t we are now scrambling in January to find anyone to help and now have to gamble on players who are not proven consistent goalscorers and don’t know if they will adapt to Italian football. Terrible
As usual, you’re being a bit harsh. Chukwueze is currently starting, as Leao is injured, Okafor is injured and even Pulisic has missed time. This is called depth. Yes, he’s not producing yet, but without Chukwueze we could easily find ourselves in a situation where we’re starting Traore or Romero on one side, maybe even a situation where we’re starting both. Then you’d complain about how we don’t have depth. Musah is not a backup, he was brought in a future player and yet is already an important piece. He’s 20 and he has 960 minutes of game time over 15 appearances, second only to Reijnders among our midfielders.
We spent 130m in the summer to add starting quality AND depth. Unfortunately there just wasn’t enough for a striker. Of course, perhaps we could take a loan from a hedge fund like Oaktree, as Inter did, and risk bankruptcy and repossession, as Inter is (and as Yonghong Li did), or we could just cook the books get punished by dropping out of Europe and ask then “shareholders” to inject capital, as Juventus does. Or we can continue to build the squad at a steady rate. Once we recover Bennacer, the only major missing piece is this striker, after which perhaps another addition at CB might come in handy, plus a Theo backup (and maaaybe another RB) and then squad will be “complete”. THEN we’ll be able to make a targeted signing were we spend 40-50m on one player to improve a single position. Don’t expect that until 2025.