The Michael Bradley transfer serial continues...
According to German daily Hamburger Abendblatt, HSV exec Dietmar Beiersdorfer will be at the Summer Olympics in China to keep tabs on both the U.S. midfielder and Boca Juniors left back Luciano Monzon.
As the story goes, Hamburg first filed a Bradley enquiry with Heerenveen several months ago (a birdie of mine claims this was in November of last year) and were told then that the asking price was €3.5 million.
As I wrote yesterday, there has been a great deal of somewhat unsubstantiated reportage and fan speculation on how much Mikey would cost his new club. Considering the general time line, the increase in the number of teams interested and Heerenveen's impressive poker guts, my Guess-timate-r 3000 (named after André Benjamin) places the current going rate in the €5-6 million neighborhood.
Many people assume that a player heading into the last year of his contract would come with a discount, and normally they'd be right. However, Bradley is 21 and coming off of the fourth highest scoring season for an Eredivisie midfielder over the last decade (15, Van der Vaart, Wesley Sneijder and Denny Landzaat, in case you're wondering). Most importantly, though, he has competition for his services. The market has license and it drives.
Also bear in mind that the Abendblatt article's main point is to say Piotr Trochowski will be handed the attack keys should Rafael van der Vaart leave for Real Madrid (I will post on this very topic tomorrow). In other words, Bradley would not be viewed as a direct #10 replacement like many stateside observers have imagined - nor should he be, that's not his game.
I'll see if I can reach Beiersdorfer (one of the real good guys in European soccer) on Monday, and with any luck, will report back over at Soccer365. I have no idea if this German article is on the nose, but I wouldn't go ordering your own HSV BRADLEY shirt just yet even if it is.
Frankly, I stopped presuming I had the ability to follow this situation six months ago. I'm half ready to believe he'll end up with a team not among the dozen already outed as admirers a la Danny Szetela to Racing Santander.
What I do know for sure is that I could punch a unicorn in the eye right now if it got me two Laugenkäsestange from that bakery across from the Sternschanze station in Hamburg. You know the one, right near the Millerntor.
UPDATE: My Beiersdorfer triangulation efforts failed Monday. We try, try again...
- Greg Seltzer
(Photo: FeanFans.nl)
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2 comments:
Would Germany be a good move for Bradley?
I think Mike would do well in the Bundesliga game, but I doubt he'd be a 15-goal type of player there.
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