The top Super League goalscorer in the preliminary round is most likely to leave Switzerland and join Serie A club Fiorentina. FCB is weakened in the championship race – how strong is it to absorb this loss?
Cheering with the most spectacular Super League footballer of 2021: Arthur Cabral (left).
“Once again,” said David Degen on Thursday afternoon. “We didn’t sell Cabral because we had the knife to our necks. We sold it because the components were right. Or: It hasn’t been sold yet.”
This is how Degen, the most influential member of the FC Basel board of directors, spoke about the personnel that the scene has been busy with for days. Arthur Cabral, the Super League’s top scorer, is set to make the move to Serie A club Fiorentina. As a water level report, Degen had prepared that the transfer was “not finished today”, the medical check and “other details” were missing – but the longer the press conference lasted, the clearer it became: Cabral is going. Degen once said that the leadership was well aware that FCB had lost a player in Cabral who had recently scored 28 goals – “28?” Degen asked, he didn’t seem so sure. And in fact, statistics for the past six months show “only” 27 goals – but the one goal more or less is no longer important for a player who is probably sold.
In a conversation with the NZZ in early December, Cabral made a confident impression. He once compared his style of play to former Brazilian soccer stars Ronaldo and Adriano. He is big and strong, powerful and powerful like his two compatriots. And Cabral said: “Of course I will move on to a top league at some point.”
Arthur Cabral is already welcomed as a Fiorentina player on Youtube.
Sometime doesn’t seem like two months later. The striker has been linked with many clubs in recent weeks and the move would be the logical consequence of repeated notable performances at Basel. Overall, he was the most conspicuous footballer in the Super League in 2021.
The choice of club is understandable. Fiorentina has proved to be the ideal springboard for many footballers on their way to an even bigger club. The dangerous goalkeeper Dusan Vlahovic is about to move to Juventus, and there is talk of a transfer fee of around CHF 75 million. Cabral is tipped to replace the 21-year-old Serb in Florence and joins a team that has decent attacking football and is sixth in the table on points lost.
Transfer fee lower than expected
Cabral’s development further enhances the Super League as a training league. However, because he was involved with FCB internationally in the third-rate Conference League this season and not in the Champions League, the transfer fee is less than 20 or even 25 million francs, as observers thought realistic a year ago.
It looks like a nested transfer construct in which FCB has to pass on several millions. Including bonus payments, the Basel team should receive around 16 million francs, with Cabral’s former Brazilian clubs Ceará and Palmeiras splitting a maximum of half of it, according to the Brazilian media. It is also said that FCB transferred around five million francs to South America in the summer of 2020 after a previous loan deal for half of the transfer rights to Cabral.
The Cabral transfer to Florence looks like a nested transfer construct.
Including the losses in the intermediary trade, FCB has not processed a transfer of this magnitude for a long time. Time may have forgotten that even more valuable bills of exchange were almost the norm in the past. The sales of Mohamed Elyounoussi, Manuel Akanji or Breel Embolo brought even higher revenues. And of course there was the departure of Mohamed Salah in 2014, with whom Cabral has recently been compared. It’s a big comparison because Salah moved to Chelsea back then – and now plays for Liverpool.
Salah also attracted attention with FCB in more important competitions, scoring goals in the Champions League and Europa League. When FCB advanced to the quarter-finals in the Europa League in the 2019/20 season, Cabral scored two goals in eleven games.
The Cabral transfer would do FCB good, without a doubt. He needs income, and last fall the bosses were still looking in the furthest corners of the company for savings. At the end of 2021, CEO Dani Büchi put FCB’s structural deficit at almost thirty million francs a year. On Thursday, Degen said: “I don’t sleep better or worse when we know that the structural deficit is higher or lower. The fact is: we have to bring the structural deficit to zero.”
Aside from financial hardships, the possible loss of Cabrals puts FCB to the test: how stable is it under Degen’s new leadership to absorb such a weighty departure? Solid in the squad – but also in the club. Does scouting work? After all, a scorer who scored 27 or 28 goals this season is lost – and certainly: 14 in 18 league games. Sebastiano Esposito and Liam Millar scored the second most Super League goals – 4 each. How can so many goals be conjured up? Degen said on Thursday: “To be honest, we intend to replace Arthur with two players. And we probably want to present a central defender.”
Arthur Cabral was a guarantee for goals and spectacles in FC Basel.
The comparison with Ferguson
It was an open or at least open-hearted appearance by Degen anyway. He also commented on the interview with the “Sonntagsblick” a week before Christmas, in which it was easy to understand that the coach Patrick Framework would soon be fired. It was almost guaranteed that FCB was interested in former Hoffenheim coach Alfred Schreuder. After a lively exchange, however, FCB stuck to the frame; the coach received a contract extension and two new assistants, Guillermo Abascal and Boris Smiljanic. On Thursday, Degen said: «Yes, we talked to other candidates. But in the end we came to the conclusion that the current constellation is the best.”
Big and powerful, powerful and powerful: Arthur Cabral likes to compare himself to Brazilian football stars.
Frame, associated with FCB since childhood, sat next to Degen and probably didn’t learn anything new. He later said that they wanted “new impetus” – and that he thinks he once read that Alex Ferguson, Manchester United’s legendary coach, changed the staff every other year. Afterwards, however, the frame also pointed out that Ferguson had worked in Manchester “for a very long time” (it was almost 27 years). Degen had to laugh about that, and he said: “The right saying at the right time.”
It would do FCB good if relaxation and mutual understanding weren’t just snapshots. Before the start of the second half of the season (on Sunday in Lucerne) they are seven points behind leaders FC Zurich – and the task of forming a team shouldn’t get much easier in the face of recent and forthcoming mutations. FCB has already given up three players who would be valuable pillars for any Super League club: defender Eray Cömert (Valencia), midfielder Jordi Quintilla (St. Gallen) and – for a transfer fee worth millions – winger Edon Zhegrova ( Lille).
“Yes, now we’ve lost Cabral and Edon,” said Degen – once again confirming the sale of a player who hadn’t even been sold at the time.