Say hello to my little friend…

By: Magnusson | June 23rd, 2008

I’ve been talking about the “BAK27” project for a while now and never took time to eplain it. It’s pretty easy BA as in Ben Arfa, K as in Koné and 27 as in 27 million euros. This is the financial montage that will help us land these two players without having to do anything crazy.

First comes the K. Bakary Koné is a great player. Even more than that, he’s a spectacular player. He has been an incredible asset to Nice during the past few seasons and his president Maurice Cohen would like to get as much money out of him as he could. Having already sold Ederson and Lloris to Lyon for a grand total of 25 million euros(14+11). President Cohen would like to continue on that route and believes Baky is worth 12 million. Marseille proposed “only” eight million and he seems to be stalling.

In the meantime we have come to terms with the player who would like to be present at the Commanderie on wednesday morning when the season training starts. José Anigo wanted to add Cédric Carasso to the equation and get Koné on the cheap. Seen as how Nice just lost a keeper and that Cdric is a great keeper with European experience. We’ll see what happens but from the mouth of Bakary Koné’s agent himself, it is just a matter of days.

Sidebar – Another K, Kim, seems to be losing patience at Nancy. Having already said he didn’t want to play anywhere else but Marseille and practically assured to come, he has been relegated to the background after many of our players reiterated their will to stay next season (Bolo Zenden, Karim Ziani and even Modeste Mbami who I belived was gone). Kim might still come, since Djibril Cissé is entertaining the possibility of playing for Wigan (some players are just dumb like that!). We’ll just have to wait and see.

Now with the Ben Arfa part of the story. As I’ve told you afew days ago, he was in Marseille last wednesday to look for houses in a nearby village. Jean-Michel Aulas and Pape Diouf met over the weekend and apparently didn’t come to terms. After having said they wanted to sell between15 and 20 million for the kid, it seems the price is now at least 17 million. Jean-Michel Aulas is apparently going to give Claude Puel the chance of convinving the player to stay. This is going to be this summer’s soap.