If you’ve been following the Emerson Royal to AC Milan transfer saga (and I know you have, that’s why you’re here not-reading these articles on Cartilage Free Captain Dot Com) you know that over the past two weeks there’s been a LOT of “updates” that essentially boil down to the same basic thing: Tottenham want €20m to send Emerson to Italy, and Milan don’t want to pay more than €15m.
That’s why over the past two weeks there have been numerous reports on social media, via Fabrizio Romano, Italian sources, etc. that all say the same thing: “the clubs are close and negotiations will continue over the next few hours/days/weeks.” It’s also why I stopped writing about it, frankly. It’s boring! There’s nothing new here! The clubs are still talking, they’re working out things like payment structures, performance clauses, blah blah blah.
Well, thanks to journalist Ben Jacobs, now we have something new to talk about. According to Jacobs on Twitter, Milan are now threatening to back out of the Emerson Royal deal entirely to focus on other priorities, ostensibly because they’re tired of negotiating.
Okay. That sounds pretty bad, right? Well, maybe. See, here’s the thing you need to know about Ben Jacobs — the guy clearly has sources within the game, but he doesn’t seem to be that discriminating about what he writes from those sources. He just seems to write stuff and publish whatever people tell him, no matter if there are conflicting sources out there. In this case, it’s very very clear he’s getting his info from the AC Milan side of the equation, though possibly not through Milan itself. If Milan are frustrated with what they perceive as intransigence on Tottenham’s side and they want to try and get some further concessions from Spurs in this deal, it’s a very very VERY common tactic to get a friendly journalist to write that they are threatening to pull out of a deal to get the other side to come back to the table with something meatier. That friendly journalist is Ben Jacobs.
But it’s also not really clear if this is directly for Milan, which begs the question — if it ISN’T sourced directly from Milan, who is Jacobs caping for? It’s weird. I have no idea. But this is a thing in the world, and so I guess we better mention it, right?
Anyway, that’s what I think is happening here — it’s negotiation through the press, and this is someone’s gambit to get things moving again. And it’s incredibly stupid, since apparently the Italian sources aren’t even talking to each other! Look what just dropped from Gianluca DiMarzio just in the time while I was writing this article!
. @acmilan closing for #EmersonRoyal . Expected approval of @SpursOfficial between today and tomorrow @SkySport
And just like that we’re back to “the clubs are close and negotiations will continue over the next few hours/days/weeks.” Now, does this mean that Jacobs is wrong? Nope! He could have the goods here. He sometimes does! But I’m certainly not ready to take a tweet from Ben Jacobs that’s clearly sourced from someone close to Milan and run with it as gospel, at least not while the Godfather of Italian transfer rumors Gianluca DiMarzio is saying something different.
GOD I love the transfer window, it’s the grossest, sloppiest, Bat-Countriest garbage imaginable and we’re all eating it up like pigs at the trough. Keep it coming!
