Erling Haaland

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Guscruz said:
I want to say something here because I just realized there is a part of the discussion about Haaland that I assumed was understood by most people, but it hit me reading the Kane thread that maybe many people don’t quite grasp it.

Let’s assume Harry Kane (Could be another random player) costs 120M and Haaland costs 150M. There is no way that our club, if it can afford the 150M, is going to look at that and think “oh, Kane is cheaper, therefore a better deal!”. We can discuss here about Kane’s injuries, age or discuss which player fits the team better, but ultimately there is going to be no commercial business like getting Haaland out there except MAYBE Mbappe. Why? Because when you look at Haaland, you are looking at a very marketable, already iconic, player with global appeal that will bring in a lot of money to this club. It’s a deal that quickly pays itself off commercially.

We will try our best to pay the least we can because this is a business, but ultimately Raiola knows what he has and knows that he can ask for a lot. And the clubs know that the player is worth that. But to qualify for getting those commercial returns down the line, the clubs need to pay big now, and that is cut-off point: we are one of the very few that can do it, and it would be stupid not to do so. That is why I have said many times here that I never had a doubt we would be interested in him or that dealing with Raiola would never be an issue. Because the ultimate goal is simply too good to pass. What we call a generational talent is for the business people just as a much a once in a generation opportunity. Any club would have paid whatever it could to get Messi at 18, for instance. It’s also why when Mbappe was available for a move in 2017 and we knew of his potential, we were willing to pay his price. When PSG paid what they paid for Neymar, they knew what they were doing. They were elevating their brand. They haven’t regretted one bit having spent what they did on him even if by the end of his run there, they still haven’t won the UCL, which is their ultimate sporting goal. There isn’t a day here in Brazil that I will go out and not see at least one person wearing PSG merchandise. We can be “the best team in the world” and win all the titles for as long as we want, but there is a commercial limit to that until you bring in a superstar that will broaden the reach of the club. This is a match made in heaven: we are the peak of our powers from the football perspective, and we are just waiting for that superstar to be the cherry on top to start capitalizing on it. I thought that was sort of understood when people talked about Messi coming as a commercial decision as much as a sporting decision, but I don’t think they have realized that the same logic applies to Haaland. So like I said, if we are to be chosen to be his next club, OF COURSE we will pay as much as we can. The next logical step IS getting the star, especially with Aguero gone. The fact we haven’t made an investment of this size on a star that changes the brand of the club is simply because the opportunity hasn’t presented itself in the market, with the exception of Mbappe years ago when what happened was that we weren’t chosen.

This is different than the club trying to get the better deal with the CB last summer, for instance. Picking Dias over Kounde and Koulibaly wasn’t “oh, we don’t spend a lot on a single player” or “Txiki finds obscure smart names quietly away from the media”. The club simply saw that there wouldn’t be much of a difference with those names and that the Dias deal was the better one with the offloading of Otamendi. Spending more on the others wouldn’t bring in different commercial returns OR make the team better than with Dias. Pep wasn’t involved at all. It’s very simple and not that hard to understand.
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There’s no way we’re paying 150M in today’s financial market, forget it.
 
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