Today’s edition of “Il Corriere dello Sport” focuses on Palermo and the Vandeputte goal.
Sprint for Jari Vandeputte. The king of assists in the 2023/24 Serie B championship, a player followed by Palermo even in the recent past, is still a target for the Viale del Fante club. Who now insists on the Catanzaro midfielder who has reached the top, at 14, in the ranking of players with the highest number of winning passes. Negotiations are underway between the two companies which could enter a “hot” phase next week. The parties will update again in the next few days and the Rosanero management will understand if there really are the conditions to arrive at the white smoke. For the Belgian midfielder, valued at around 4 million, Palermo offers 3 million. The distance is not lacking but the feeling, perhaps by inserting a technical counterpart into the operation, is that there are still margins to reach a meeting point between supply and demand.
Excl. Pres. Catanzaro: «Palermo and Serie A teams on Vandeputte. Our request…”
BACKFIRE. At the moment, there are two certainties: the City Group company does not intend to participate in auctions and will have to present itself with convincing arguments to win a profile followed in B (Cremonese and Frosinone) and also by some A companies such as Lecce, Turin and Udinese. A multi-year contract and salary equal to what a top-flight club would guarantee him would be the winning “keys”. The tools necessary to push the player to accept Serie B again. His contract with Catanzaro expires in 2025. The Giallorossi want to evaluate Vandeputte’s position and market prospects with the new coach but would not resist if the interested party decided to measure their ambitions with a Serie A club or, as in the case of Palermo, with a team belonging among the cadets to a higher bracket than that of the Calabrian association. In any case, the Rosanero are not giving up and want to give coach Dionisi a player who would go very well with his idea of football. This season he has scored 10 goals in 41 official matches and made 14 assists (15 also counting the Italian Cup) as a left winger in Vivarini’s 4-4-2 but can also act as a midfielder in a 4-3-3 and play wide on the left in a 4-2-3-1. He sees the goal and knows how to attack spaces well. The latter is a characteristic that is functional to the needs of Palermo which is also looking for new solutions from this point of view. However, reinforcements will arrive in midfield.
