With the European Championships in a brief hiatus following the completion of the Round of 16 clashes, we are back to some Arsenal chatter and there’s no better place to start than Arsenal’s links with the hot prospect from Bologna, Riccardo Calafiori. In what can easily be termed as a disastrous campaign for the defending European champions, Italy, Calafiori, alongside his captain and goalkeeper, Gigi Donnarumma, were among the players that stood out for the Azzurri.
Despite being just 22, Calafiori showed maturity beyond his years in this tournament, playing alongside the more experienced Alessandro Bastoni in the back line, as he was above the likes of Gianluca Mancini, Alessandro Buongioma and Federico Gatti in the Italian defense.
Calafiori was an instrumental part of the Bologna team that finished in fifth place in Serie A last season, earning European football in the process, and their coach, Thiago Motta, was poached by Juventus following Massimo Allegri’s departure. In the 33 games Calafiori played for Bologna last season, he featured predominantly as a left center back, and had a handful of games as a left back. This leaves me a bit puzzled because Arsenal is relatively stocked in that position – Oleksandr Zinchenko is the No. 1 guy there, we think, then there’s Takehiro Tomiyasu who’s adept there, Jakub Kiwior that got a handful of games there, Jurrien Timber that featured in that position a lot in preseason before his unfortunate injury, then two loanees, Nuno Tavares and Kieran Tierney that returned to the club after failing to impress in their loan spells.
There is also the fact that Calafiori’s former boss, Motta, wants him at Juventus, and then there’s Chelsea of course, the Boehly Bullies.
The only way I can see this deal for Calafiori making any sense is if Arsenal has any plans to ship out some of the mainstays, like Zinchenko or Kiwior, to facilitate the deal. Zinchenko seems to have gone out of favor and Kiwior was been linked with moves back to Italy, so there’s that.
However, I’d take this with a pinch of salt and a part of me believes that these Calafiori stories are a bid to get some chatter around him ahead of that move to Juventus. Italians, or players in the Italian League, a la Dusan Vlahovic or Manuel Locatelli, tend to stay in the Serie A, rather than move to the Premier League. I firmly believe that if Jorginho was still an established player at Napoli, rather than in the trenches at Chelsea, he might not have favored a move to Arsenal, especially with being at the September of his career.
We will keep monitoring the situation and see how it pans out.
Sayonara.
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