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