MN: Deschamps pressure and Bennacer blow – how Marseille pulled off Rabiot signing

Image: Fabrizio Romano

After all the talk of huge salary demands, some surprising news emerged last night when Adrien Rabiot’s move to Marseille was made official almost out of nowhere.

We reported towards the end of the summer window that Milan held a concrete interest in signing Rabiot, opening talks with his mother-agent and putting forward two offers, with the second obviously being higher than the first.

MilanNews describes his switch to Marseille as a ‘bolt from the blue’. Rabiot has signed a two-year contract and now has the objective of bringing l’OM back to the Champions League, but it is a marriage that no one would have considered possible until yesterday.

After all, Rabiot is only 29 years old, he played at Paris Saint-Germain – who are Marseille’s big rivals – and Juventus, he had a big salary at Juventus and a mother-agent called Veronique who is a notoriously tough nut to crack.

His €7m salary made him the highest paid of all the Bianconeri players last season, after Paul Pogba. Meanwhile, Marseille’s highest earner was Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg with €3.4m, followed by Kondogbia at just under €3m.

What is even more intriguing is that Marseille held negotiations with Ismael Bennacer over a move, whose salary is €4m net per year. The Algerian was the main target but they considered his wages high, while they didn’t find an agreement with Milan.

Everything suggested that they would try again in January, also considering the space freed up by the sale of Jordan Veretout to Lyon. Another injury to the former Empoli man seems to have swayed them to make an effort for Rabiot.

 

L’Equipe report that both Marseille and the player made a great effort to meet each other on the salary matter and even on the signing bonus issue. That still raises questions as to why Rabiot took presumably a lower offer than the one that came forward from other clubs, possibly even from Milan.

One reason could be the fact that Rabiot found himself in a sticky situation in mid-September and with the warning from the French coach Didier Deschamps that he must find a club or lose his spot.

In addition, there is talk of him being a boyhood Marseille fan, and also the story this his mother Veronique did everything she could to prevent her son from moving to PSG, offering him to Manchester City and some Spanish clubs.

Tags AC Milan Adrien Rabiot

18 Comments

Add a Comment
  1. If Fofana or Loftus-Cheek goes down, there is only Musah at midfielder. Or Reijnders in front of the defense. Not scary at all. But Furlani will tell the press that there is no panic, as usual.

        1. Well if they do get a chance and they play well you won’t even remember writing this.
          I will tho.
          Doom and gloom because we have 5 midfielders and one of them is injured. Ridiculous.

          1. Luckily my self confidence doesn’t rely on what Internet people that I don’t know and never met think or remember about me. I have no problem being proven wrong, especially if it’s in my interest (Milan being a top club is in my interested). I’m not involved in the egotistic battle royale that is going on here.

            I was just saying that Milan, which should be a Serie A contender and which should have a solid midfield after two consecutive mercati focused on that sector, will compete in UCL with three midfielders, including one that seems blind half of the time. Maybe the kids will shine, maybe they will struggle. Nobody knows. Seems like a big gamble, again.

          2. Kind of worrying considering they spent 90 millions on midfield but when the most disliked midfielder, a liability to many here, gets injuried, there’s still panic. Goes to show no one really has trust in this new set of midfielders.

    1. Did you just say:

      “ Yep. There’s depth in every position now. Maybe not the best quality, but a lot better than 2 years ago.”

      LOLOLOLO….. “maybe not the best quality”???? So you admit our quality is poor yet you constantly praise Redbird for (allegedly) spending a made up 200M on transfers?? BUT we still don’t have the best quality?? Hahahahahahahaha!! Do you realize how foolish you sound? Likely not. Unbelievable.

    1. That’s exactly what happened. Rabiot is an idiot and a mercenary. He let his own mother control him like he’s a child. In the end he got a lesser salary and moved to a weaker league and a weaker club.

      His best option was to take the money from the Saudi club, stay at juventus or go to Milan. In the end this greedy bastard got less than what these 3 clubs were offering him. What a joke!

  2. The point is that we don’t really need him at this point. The man is not exactly a game-changer, in fact he wouldn’t be even a starter in this Milan. He would actually be something like a luxury squad player for us, and considering his salary demands, and absurdly expensive choice in that regard. So good luck to you, Adrien.

  3. He is starter and reject juve offer 7m euro nett. Dont forget his mother slam and bashing juve & motta saying : there is no need to close door for rabbior but we are closing door for juve firstly, it is such arrogance from his mother, did she forget juve give her 20m euro comission after he free from PSG ? ACM are lucky dodge the bullet because he reject 5,5m euro nett + bonus 500k euro from ACM

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Serie A Standings

Live football scores . Current table, fixtures & results.