Never wait for the icing on the cake - The Square Ball 5/8/22

HAUNTED HOMETOWN

Written by: Rob Conlon

The world can’t stop talking about him, so Charles De Ketelaere is the sound of the summer. Milan confirmed their signing of De Ketelaere earlier this week, putting an end to what has quite rightly been described as the ‘soap opera’ of this Pazza Bamf lookalike’s immediate future: Leeds on one side, flashing cold hard cash in the young man’s face; Milan on the other, whispering sweet nothings into his ear about life in Italy and Champions League football; De Ketelaere in the middle, wearing a ‘freedom’ baseball cap, just wanting to fight for justice and follow his heart.

Having a load of football clubs wanting to give you lots of money to play for them must really get in the way of your summer plans, and De Ketelaere’s agents Tom De Mul and Yama Sharifi have been telling HLN about their client’s “rough weeks” over the last couple of months:

“West Ham, Newcastle, Arsenal have all followed Charles but they never pushed through. Even Barcelona has followed him for a long time, but I didn’t think that was the right step.

“Financially, Leeds would have been the best option. For Club Brugge, for Charles, for us. But Charles wanted to wait a little longer. When Charles felt that Milan were 100% serious things started to turn.

“At one point De Ketelaere said, ‘I absolutely want to go to Milan.’ Then you are left with a club that has too high expectations because they received a higher offer. I told De Ketelaere, ‘If you want to go to Milan, I’m behind you.’ But I also added, ‘Get ready for some rough weeks.’

“After the meeting in Belgium, the clubs no longer wanted to talk to each other. Then we went to Lugano. Two superpowers confronted each other and it became a real battle. The outside world cannot understand how difficult it has been to resolve the situation.”

Lugano is Gaetano Berardi’s home patch. If Team CDK think they had a ‘battle between superpowers’ there, they should count themselves lucky Leeds didn’t send Tano in to settle it.

Jesse Marsch said towards the end of last season he wanted to sign two attacking players this summer, the priority being a centre-forward, then hopefully a more versatile option who can play on the wing or centrally. Luis Sinisterra fits the profile of the latter as Raphinha’s replacement, but that vacancy in the middle is still open with De Ketelaere choosing Milan.

Reading his agent’s explanation, it would be unfair to criticise Leeds too harshly for this little turncoat’s decision to move to Italy instead. Leeds were offering the most money in terms of transfer fee and wages, but they couldn’t offer the thing he really wanted, Champions League football. Can we not just, er, try signing some greedier and less ambitious footballers?

Andrea Radrizzani has had his say on Leeds’ attempts to sign De Ketelaere while speaking to Phil Hay and David Ornstein for The Athletic. While he suggests young Charlie was considering Leeds a bit more seriously than his agents’ version of events, their stories broadly align:

“First of all I want to say that Victor Orta and the team behind him, Jesse, myself, we have done a fantastic job. Out of six targets we got five in only two weeks. Before going to Australia we had five targets completed. I don’t see any club in Europe that have completed five targets in such a short period of time. We were clear, we moved fast, and bang, we closed the deals.

“The only one, and we did everything perfect, including the deal with Bruges — we had a deal with the club, but not with the player — was Charles De Ketelaere. He was our icing on the cake, our plus, a special player. Unfortunately we didn’t make it. Good luck to him. Honestly, we are also competing with AC Milan. They won the title. They are in the Champions League.

“The fact that he was watching our documentary, he was fifty-fifty doubtful about Milan or Leeds for a period of time, already makes me really proud that we are [going] in the right direction, but it wasn’t enough. Next time we have to do better.”

So what more could Leeds really have done? Oh no, wait, there was one thing. As ever, Radrizzani kept talking just that little bit too much longer, and when Ornstein mentioned to Radrizzani it must hurt losing a target to a club in his home city, Radz dropped a detail he might have been better off not saying:

“To be honest, I should have gone maybe ten days before to Belgium to close the deal. We had a period of time that I knew Milan was sleeping because of the change of ownership. I hesitated maybe a week, ten days more than I should have.”

Don’t tell us that! Now whenever CDK scores for Milan, or Pat Bamford fails to score for Leeds, we’re going to be thinking, what the hell Radz was doing for those ten days, when he could have been buying us some icing for our cake?

Maybe this is just how haunted Radrizzani is by De Ketelaere joining Milan. Ornstein had a point about him choosing Andrea’s home town. How is Radz going to feel when he nips out for an espresso or visits the Pinacoteca di Brera art gallery, and bumps into Charlie taking a selfie in front of the Duomo? Imagine the awkward small talk as Charles, reputedly a shy boy, mumbles about what a great time he’s having in Radz’s hometown, asking how Leeds are getting on without him?

Perhaps the frustration for club, fanbase and owner comes from the way Leeds have hit upon the same problem buying De Ketelaere as they did selling Raphinha. Leeds agreed deals to buy CDK from Club Bruges for more money than Milan were offering, and to sell Rapha to Chelsea for more than Barcelona were initially offering. Radrizzani says:

“For me, it was done, the deal with Chelsea. When I have a deal, my word is my word. I felt ashamed to go back to Todd Boehly, the owner of Chelsea, and change the position. It was really disrespectful and not the right thing to do, but I didn’t have a choice.

“The best deal and the deal we agreed was with Chelsea. At the end, the deal we came up with Barcelona is pretty much the same for the way we structured, but it took time, it was hard, it took time to manage well.”

Ultimately, De Ketelaere has ended up at Milan and Rapha has gone to Barcelona because players have a say in their own futures. I think that’s a good thing, because they’re human beings, not animals being sent from one zoo to another for spectators to gawp at, which is what Radz makes them sound like, searching for a metaphor in his second language and landing on Leeds being a “cage” for players like Raphinha and Kalvin Philips:

“In this moment we need to be realistic. We cannot be at that level [of Barcelona or Manchester City]. And we would be wrong to put the players in a cage when they have the talent. Raphinha is a special player. Honestly, with a good World Cup, I think he can become one of the top twenty players in the world, so why keep him in the cage?”

As for feeling ashamed at having to tell Todd Boehly that Rapha didn’t want to play for Chelsea, he should’ve been laughing his head off down the phone, saying that’s for Lewis Baker and Izzy Brown.

Who Leeds will try to sign instead of De Ketelaere remains unclear. Radz says Leeds are still actively looking for a striker and a left-back, but warns they were only going to spend a record transfer fee on CDK because he’s a “special player” who would have been “an investment for the future of the club”. Meanwhile, he has confidence in Joffy Gelhardt as Bamford’s back-up and insists that even without Rapha and Kalvin we’re in a stronger position than last season, because selling our two best players has meant we’ve been able to strengthen the squad by signing six new ones. The key line is right at the start of The Athletic’s video:

“I might be wrong, but this is my conviction, and I think the pitch will show it.”

Which suggests Radrizzani has indeed learned some lessons from last season. It’s been good to see him facing questions from the media, but the most reliable answers only become apparent when the game kicks off.