Listen carefully, I will say zis only once. We are ze French resistancé and we are invading ze Roundábout with our pump-action baguettes becausé your dirty Premier Ligue clubs are trying to steal all zè good French players! Je déteste! Je n’ai pas! Take your dirty, stinky pound sterlings and shove them up your l’oeuf holes!
Enough frog-leggery and back to the very serious matter of today’s transfer lies. But there is a recurring trend throughout today’s edition of Le Roundabout; perhaps for their exceptional cooking skills, perhaps because we all need a few lessons from the stereotypical masters of the horizontal tango, every club in world football wants a Frenchman.
So starting us off is news that Yes We Kante! Or at least, Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal and Chelsea Kante because Leicester City’s star midfielder, whose tenacious ball-winning style is the illegitimate lovechild of Claude Makelele and Ramires, has a £20million release clause in his contract. Just leave the cash in an unmarked briefcase under the Arc de Triumph and he’s yours.
Meanwhile, Chelsea are in talks to sign another Frenchman, much to the detriment of fellow flirtatious glancers Manchester United, in Fulham frontman Moussa Dembele. No relation to the Tottenham midfielder of the same name, every journalist to have ever written about the 19-year-old in the last twelve months has felt obliged to mention – as if Mrs. Dembele is either stupid or spiteful enough to give her two sons the exact same first name, only for both to become professional footballers.
Likewise, Spurs are keen to sign a token Frenchman of their own in Lassana Diarra, once of played-a-few-games-for-Arsenal-and-Chelsea-before-lifting-the-FA-Cup-with-Portsmouth fame. Apparently, Marseille took the hilariously negligent measure of inserting a clause in the four-year contract he signed at the start of the season that will allow him to leave the club for free this summer, which makes you wonder why they bothered agreeing a four-year contract in the first place.
Even Barcelona want an onion and garlic merchant in their ranks next season. Indeed, the tiki-taka warriors are ready to cough up £50million for West Ham’s Dimitri Payet. Would he start ahead of Lionel Messi? No. Would he start ahead of Neymar? No. Would he start ahead of Andres Iniesta? No. Would he start ahead of Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets or Ivan Rakitic? No. So why are Barcelona going to pay £50million for him? Who Knows.
And finally, in transfer lies not involving French players, the Keisuke Honda rumours have re-emerged – sorry, Spurs and West Ham fans – whilst the tallest tall tale of the day award goes to Italian publication La Nazione, who claim Fiorentina are demand Manchester United give them teenage goal-scoring demi-god Marcus Rashford in exchange for Steve Buschemi Federico Bernardeschi. Go home La Nazione, you’re drunk.
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