Manu Koné is the Player That Big Clubs Want but Nobody Has Bid For

The football week has settled into its post-World Cup rhythm, which means all of the big transfer stories are the ones that haven’t quite happened yet. Chief amongst them is the tug-of-war building up around Manu Koné, the 25-year-old Roma and France midfielder whose reputation went up a couple of notches during Les Bleus’ run to fourth place in the United States of America, Mexico and Canada.

What is most interesting about the situation is that big clubs are apparently interested in him, but none have actually decided to pull the trigger. Why not?

Image Credit: Bryan Berlin / WikiPortraits

What’s Going On

Both Liverpool and Manchester United have made their interest clearly known this week, without either of them being willing to firm it up with a bid. According to reporting from The Athletic, Roma have set an asking price of somewhere between €50 million and €60 million for the midfielder and are, in the polite phrasing of the various outlets, ‘prepared to listen’ because the Giallorossi’s financial situation more or less compels them to. It is not what they would like to be doing, of course. Koné still has three years left on his contract and is exactly the kind of midfielder Roma would build a team around.

@liverpoolfaninjapan Everyone keeps calling Manu Koné a No. 6, but that’s not his game. He’s a roaming destroyer; the player who wins the ball, plugs the gaps, presses relentlessly, and gives the creative stars the freedom to shine. Think Kanté. Mascherano. Gattuso. That’s the profile. #LFC #LiverpoolFC #Liverpool #YNWA #LiverpoolTransfers ♬ original sound – Liverpool Fan In Japan

For Andoni Iraola, whose first pre-season in charge of Liverpool has produced a lot of encouraging noises and very few actual signings, Koné would be the kind of upgrade that would make his front-foot pressing structure work over the long thirty-eight-game Premier League season. For Michael Carrick at Manchester United, who has spent most of July being briefed against by various former United players on podcasts, a French international midfielder in his mid-twenties would go a long way to shoring up an area of the pitch that has arguably embarrassed the club for two years running.

The wrinkle is that neither club is under any real time pressure. Roma haven’t put a deadline on the situation, no other Champions League club has entered the race in any serious way and the transfer window still has more than five weeks to run before the September the first deadline. That is more than enough time for the price to drift up if a second bidder emerges and is more than enough time for either Iraola or Carrick to decide that Koné isn’t the profile they need after all and pivot to someone else. Best guess is that this one goes down to the last fortnight of August.