Mercato | Mercato – OM: It's confirmed, McCourt will have to drop 40M €!

Posted on January 8, 2022 at 12:30 pm by Arthur Montagne

While OM completed several loans last summer, the conditions for the purchase options to be exercised will all be met without too much difficulty . This will generate a first big expense for Frank McCourt next summer.

Last summer, OM dynamited the market by attracting no less than 11 players to namely Gerson , Konrad de la Fuente , Leonardo Balerdi , Matteo Guendouzi , Cengiz Under , Pau Lopez , William Saliba , Luan Peres , Pol Lirola , Pedro Ruiz Delgado and Amine Harit . Several of them have also arrived in the form of a loan with option to buy like Matteo Guendouzi , Cengiz Under and Pau Lopez. The goal of Pablo Longoria was to avoid spending too much last summer by postponing this investment for a year. A short-term vision which forces OM to obtain results quickly since a qualification in the Champions League now seems essential. And for good reason, without the financial windfall promised to the clubs engaged in C1, the Marseillais will find it difficult to exercise the purchase options whose conditions for them to be exercised have already been met.

Several purchase options will be exercised

Indeed, a few weeks ago, Pablo Longoria assured in the columns of L'Equipe that “Guendouzi and Ünder, it is maintenance. Pau Lopez, if he makes 20 appearances. These are virtually automatic options. “With 36 points already on the clock, OM will obviously stay in Ligue 1. Consequently, the options to buy Mattéo Guendouzi , estimated at 11M €, as well as that of Cengiz Ünder , set at 8.4M €, will be automatically lifted at the end of the season. That of Pau Lopez was more difficult to achieve since the Spanish goalkeeper had to play 20 games. The latter arrived at OM initially to compete with Steve Mandanda and play the role of number 1 bis. But Jorge Sampaoli quickly revised his plans and made Pau Lopez his holder in goals. Therefore, the player loaned by the AS Roma has already reached the bar of 20 matches played with the Marseille jersey. Holder during the trip to Bordeaux on Friday evening (1-0), the Spaniard will therefore be permanently transferred to OM at the end of the season for around € 12 million. In total, for Guendouzi , Ünder and Lopez , the Marseille club will drop € 31.4 million. A sum to which must be added the 8M € of the final transfer of Arkadiusz Milik . Loaned for 18 months in January 2021, the Polish striker will see his purchase option exercised at the end of the season, as Pablo Longoria recently revealed to L'Equipe. “Operation Milik has always been referred to as a complicated operation. But it is a player who, in the end, will be the property of OM ”, assured the president of OM who will therefore have to find € 39.4 million in order to exercise these four options. purchase. Qualification in the Champions League would therefore be welcome.