The lengthy race for Folarin Balogun’s signature is reportedly set to conclude with the American forward heading back to Ligue 1.
AS Monaco is reportedly finalizing a deal to acquire Balogun in a permanent deal from English Premier League side Arsenal, multiple reports confirmed. Arsenal is set to receive $43 million (€43 million) for Balogun, which would be a record sale by the Gunners in club history.
Inter Milan, Chelsea, and Fulham were all linked with Balogun throughout the summer, but Monaco is about to win the race for the U.S. men’s national team forward.
Balogun enjoyed a stellar loan spell with Ligue 1 side Stade Reims last season, leading the team with 22 goals. A lack of senior playing time at Arsenal led Balogun to seek a move away from the Emirates, with the 22-year-old making just 10 first team appearances in London.
Balogun excelled for Arsenal’s U-18 and U-21 sides while also spending time on loan in the English Championship with Middlesbrough. The New York-born striker also featured heavily for England’s youth national teams before switching his international allegiance to the United States last spring.
Balogun scored once in the USMNT’s 2-0 Concacaf Nations League Finals victory over Canada in June. He has earned two caps to date for the USMNT, both coming in the CNL tournament.
AS Monaco has earned seven points out of a possible nine to start the Ligue 1 season, recently tying Nantes 3-3 on Friday. They missed out on European qualification after finishing sixth in Ligue 1 last season.
He is better than Jonathan David from Canada, I made people upset saying this on another soccer social media forum 😂
Were they Canadian? I mean David is only 18 months older and has about 70 more professional goals and a Ligue 1 title.
In the long run I think this will be a great move for him. Hope he continues to develop and show well. Doesn’t seem like any country is producing great 9’s right now. He does well and scores 20 plus goals for the next few years and lights up the WC in 2026; a move to even a bigger team will be likely.
unless he’s also gonna be used as a wing this isn’t a great move. yedder is good and he’d be the understudy. when ASM is trying to make europe i don’t see the near term plan as selling yedder and keeping him. ASM at a glance to me looks like a high powered offense that really needs defensive work, so they likely aren’t switching up the formation to suit balogun. he’s there when yedder gets tired or needs a night off, or as a contingency.
fanboys adore the ambitious deals but this underlines the difference in terms of role between being on 11th place vs. a team sitting 1st.
My thought was perhaps moving from 3-4-2-1 to 3-4-1-2 with Balo replacing Golovin whose more a W than AM anyway. It doesn’t make sense to pay 43 million to let him sit. This isn’t Chelsea or Man City they can’t just throw money away. As V pointed out below Monaco will want to sell him for a payday in a year or two and that doesn’t happen if he’s sitting.
JR,
Here’s something to consider.
Link attached in case you think I’m lying
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66478622
V: I wasn’t the one that accused of lying. But apparently I lied about seeing Sargent’s goal today so good company I guess.
Ughh, I guess that explains why Monaco’s bid suddenly improved.
I’ll be honest I had never really watched Monaco or Yedder so I Youtube’d it…it definitely looks like Yedder will almost certainly cut into Balogun’s goal total if for no other reason than he takes PK’s and seems unlikely to want to give that up – honestly those should get knocked off the personal tally anyhow – but they really did not look like the same player. Yedder wears jersey #10 and looked like he plays more like a false nine, and he’s a little guy who seemed to pop up on the edges of things. He makes Jesus Ferreira look imposing and he certainly didn’t look like he was ever going to be a target man. I can honestly see Yedder being even better with a guy like Balogun to run off of, because while he’s not a huge dude Balogun is strong and can absolutely hold the ball up, and Balogun’s got a vertical aspect to him I didn’t see on Yedder’s highlights. So I could definitely see the two co-existing on the same field as long as Yedder is willing to share the ball and the glory. And as was pointed out by Vacqui there’s that legal aspect to consider.
Probably not his dream situation, but it looks like it’s probably workable. And as you pointed out, Monaco didn’t drop that kind of cash just to sit him. Sure, Monaco’s a €43 million-Euro team – double that of FC Toronto, until the Messi spending spree from Miami the highest salary in MLS (and that before Balogun’s salary is added to it!) but PSG is a €336 million-Euro team. They definitely cannot pay that much for Balogun and use him as a spare. (What they dumped on his transfer fee is equal to the team’s yearly payroll!)
Monaco will likely pour in the goals, anyhow.
Wonder if they are going to change formations? Ben Yedder is there, he’s 33 but he’s the captain who scored 25 last year and has 4g in 3 matches so far. 43 million would be a lot of money for a super sub even for Monaco. It’s double any transfer they’ve had since the bought Ben Yedder in 2019.
JR,
That’s a lot of money for Monaco who normally are selling guys like Flo for 43 million. I expect Arsenal have a hell of a sell on clause attached.
With the approaching deadline, this sounds like an extended audition. Expect Monaco to showcase the hell out of Flo.
The massive fee bodes well- have to to think w/ that chunk spent on one player- they intend to use him quite a bit. Way out of the norm for them and they won’t want to devalue him by sitting him.