AC Milan are continuing to work on the possibility of signing Joshua Zirkzee and they have an advantage over the competition from abroad, a report claims.
According to La Gazzetta dello Sport, Zirkzee is a player that Milan have admired for months and he remains the priority target for the management, but there remain alternatives such as Romelu Lukaku of Chelsea and Santiago Gimenez of Feyenoord.
Everyone within the mercato team at Milan agree on Zirkzee and there have been ‘productive contacts’ with his agents over a deal, because the player is ‘in love’ with Milan and would gladly stay in Italy after two positive seasons at Bologna.
He arrived at Bologna as a talent to be developed, and he will leave as a €40m man. The mutual will is there for Milan and Zirkzee, yet the obstacles of salary and above all commissions to his entourage remain.
Milan will not pay €15m in signing bonuses to agents for a player who has a €40m release clause. Common sense suggests they would probably agree to invest €45m, perhaps a bit more, but not a total figure of €55m. The club have already said no to the requests of some agents in the past.
The impression is that the CEO Giorgio Furlani – who returned to Italy after a quick trip to Dubai – will accelerate soon, along with the technical director Geoffrey Moncada and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, but they will not deviate from their principles.
They will focus a lot on the No.9 but will not pay ‘XXL figures’ and, if possible, they will give their preference to a young striker, ready to lead the line for five or ten years.
No Zirkzee please
Speak for yourself, I think Zirkzee would be awesome for us.
Still not sure this is Gona happen or if the kid is even good enough after one season at Bologna
The kid is good enough. Recall the game he played against us at San Siro. No fear.
Not pro-Zirkzee or anything but I just liked that he had no fear and liked that spectacle and the “lights” didn’t phase him much. I’ll give him that much. We had missed those sorts of players in our team this year
Nah Zirkzee won’t join Milan. Commissions are too big, and he is not worth paying such money. Kid had only 1 good season (2 previous were meh), he wasn’t even taken to Dutch squad and they don’t really have any stunning strikers these days. That says something.
He wasn’t taken due to his injury. Players like Depay and Frenkie de Jong were, although they were also injured, selected because of their achievements in the past. The coach prefered players who had already played with the national team before.
Well, you kind of already answered yourself in the first sentence 😀 Injury was not a problem, he was just assesed as not good enough and not proven yet to be part of the Euro squad.
Take a look at example of Brobbey – he is even younger than Zirkzee, played only 1 match in national team so far (so he is definitely not proven) and played whole season in league which is not as good as Serie A (Eredivisie) for a team that had one of the worst seasons in years. Yet he made it. If you look at strikers that Koeman took it’s really not amazing list of players, yet Zirkzee was not even taken there.
Really not stunning guys like Weghorst (7 goals only in Hoffenheim), Bergwijn+Brobbey (poor Ajax season), or Depay (barely played anything this season) made it to the squad, yet Zirkzee didn’t.
And here we speak about Milan making him 1st striker and paying in total over 50milion euro for him… which will be record transfer for Milan (or one of the top record ones). It just doesn’t convince me…
the fact that Weghorst , Bergwijn and Depay were selected speaks more about the coach than the players. I’m with you, the kid had one good season and that’s a risk. But nobody will argue Weghorst is a better player.
I think speaks more about the coach. Just like Pioli early in the season sticking with Krunic. 🙂 some coaches do crazy things
That’s why the Netherlands will do poorly at the euros
Well, to be honest I wouldn’t say that Koeman did a crazy thing with not calling him up. It’s just Zirkzee was assessed as not good enough.
And combining with fact that Zirkzee had only 1 good season in his life, where he did not really make any amazing numbers – come on, 12 goals in full season? Where even Jovic as a bench warmer scored 9… having almost 1/3 time on pitch than Zirkzee had.
I don’t have anything against Zirkzee, and maybe some day he would turn to be great player, but for now it is ridiculous to me that Milan would pay over 50mil EUR for him.
okay, so you want a proven player, like Lukaku? or do you want a young, proven player? It will cost at least twice as much as Zirkzee.”
Reijnders wasn’t good enough for Oranje until after he joined Milan… Look at him now.
The comments on here are so ridiculous. When there is an article saying Milan are moving on from Zirkzee to a plan B everyone screams how the cheap owners won’t spend and have no ambition. WHen there is an article saying Milan is close to signing Zirkzee all the comments are how he is not that good and we shouldn’t sign him. I’m convinced people just want to hate. There is no way they can win. People just come here to vent their frustrations and it really has little to do with football.
I can definitely see that.
Its easy, coz their expectation is milan csn sign mbappe or halaand level player wich is quite delusional or careless imo.
Get Zirkzee
Get another Proven Veteran Striker to help him grow
This tells you why Inter will keep being invincible (mixture of experience of older players and hunger of younger ones, same reason Juve won 5 leagues without any real opposition)
Lukaku/Lautaro blossomed for same reasons
They did it with Brozovic and Hakan, Handanovic and Onana, Juve had Pogba and Pirlo, Milan did it with Zlatan/Giroud and Leao, Tomori and Kjaer…
You have to mix these things…
Now we have no veteran striker, Zirkzee will do well, but can’t win us the league without the help of an experienced striker…