Olympique Marseille beat Tottenham Hotspur to the signature of Ruslan Malinovskyi
French club Olympique Marseille have beaten Tottenham Hotspur in the race to sign talented Ukrainian footballer Ruslan Malinovskyi, with the Ligue 1 club officially confirming it on Twitter.
The Lilywhites have been keeping tabs on Malinovskyi for quite some time now. He has been linked with a switch to the N17 since the summer but a move never materialised. Marseille have now managed to leapfrog Tottenham and get the deal over the line.
An attacking midfielder by trade, Malinovskyi joined Atalanta in the Serie A in 2019 and has since then shown his quality for Gian Piero Gasperini’s side. He is a creative presence in midfield and adds a lot of quality in that area.
Malinovskyi has joined Marseille on a loan with an obligation to buy, with Fabrizio Romano claiming that the transfer fee agreed for the player is €10m fee plus €3m add-ons. It is not the most expensive of signings and we still don’t know why Tottenham didn’t push for this.
It is also just the kind of signing that Fabio Paratici and Tottenham like to pull off. They have successfully negotiated loan deals with obligations to buy for the likes of Dejan Kulusevski and Cristian Romero in the past.
If Malinovskyi had come to Tottenham, he would have given Antonio Conte the flexibility to tweak his system and play with an attacking midfielder and two strikers as he has done in the past with Inter Milan.
Anyone who follows Tottenham and watches them play regularly will know that the current midfield feels very industrious in nature and there is a lack of a creative presence who can help the forwards.
Most of the creative burden in this team, therefore, falls on the shoulders of Harry Kane. Whilst the English international does a great job dropping deep and linking up play, he could do with someone to share his burden.
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With Malinovskyi no longer a possibility, Tottenham must look at other options to add creativity to the midfield. Weston McKennie is being touted as a real possibility but let’s see who Conte & co. bring in to solve this issue.
