Jules Koundé has made a lovely gift to his boyhood club.
Jules Koundé has not forgotten his roots. A patron of the Fraternelle de Landiras club (Gironde), where he kicked his first ball in 2004, the French international has been in the news for his generosity over the festive period. As reported by actu.fr, the 25-year-old defender donated a minibus to his very first club.
It’s a gift that should delight the 210 members of La Fraternelle de Landiras. The vehicle will be used to travel to away matches every weekend. Jean-Luc Léglise, president of La Fraternelle, gave a behind-the-scenes look at the gift: “We’d been talking to Jules’ mum for a few months about the club’s needs. He had wanted to do something for the club for a while. It’s his mum who’s been the intermediary since the beginning of this project, even though he’d like to come back sometimes, he’s very busy and very often in Spain.” The player, for his part, did not wish to comment on the gesture, preferring to remain discreet.
Koundé soon to be dropped by Barça?
The winter transfer window is unlikely to see any major upheavals at Barcelona, even if some adjustments are possible at Xavi’s request after a laborious end to 2023. Next summer, on the other hand, will see the start of some major manoeuvres in Catalonia. The aim of the reigning Spanish champions is to improve their squad and their financial situation, while retaining their best players. It won’t be easy for Joan Laporta, who does not want to give up his best player Ronald Araujo, even though the sale of the Uruguayan international could fetch up to €100 million.
Barça’s defensive rock is being courted by Bayern Munich, but the Catalan club does not want to sell its star player. According to Sport newspaper, several players considered less important could be sacrificed by the Barcelona staff in order to breathe some life into the club’s finances. One such player is Jules Koundé, who is Xavi’s first choice right-back but is no longer so highly regarded that he could be forced out of Barça if a good offer is made next summer. This applies to the former Girondins de Bordeaux defender, but not only that.
Andeas Christensen, Marcos Alonso and Sergi Roberto will also be left out of the squad, even though their contracts expire in June 2024. In other words, the summer transfer window will be one of upheaval for Barcelona, and a key member of the French national team could pay the price in the form of Jules Koundé, who is likely to leave. Should this be confirmed, there is no doubt that a number of Premier League sides would be interested in acquiring the versatile Les Bleus defender.
Barça want to do away with Nike
Five and a half years later, the deal is still the same and is costing Nike a fortune. The latter, who had no objection to paying €150m a year for a club where the best player in the world was playing, takes a very dim view of the ongoing sporting crisis that Barça have been experiencing for several seasons now. The Spanish club’s lacklustre performances and the squad on offer, which bears little resemblance to what Barça once was, have had an immediate impact on marketing and therefore on shirt sales in the club’s official shops, especially since the departure of its legend Lionel Messi in 2021.
A situation that the five-time Champions League winner obviously disputes, believing that he should be earning more and justifying the sales of marketing products bearing the FCB effigy by a crying lack of effort on the part of Nike in terms of the collections on offer, which are not sufficiently desirable to the general public. This argument obviously doesn’t hold water for the brand with the swoosh, which at the same time noted that PSG had overtaken Barça in the hierarchy of clubs selling the most shirts, thanks in particular to the Jordan collections, which remain a huge international success.
So to say that there’s trouble is an understatement, and one could even say that relations are tenser than the elastic band on a tracksuit. In a difficult economic climate and at a time when the American brand has reduced its marketing investment in players, but also and above all in clubs by choosing just one top club per major league, it is hard to see how Nike could meet Barcelona’s insane demands. Worse still, according to our information, the point of no return was reached very recently when Barça missed two order slots with Nike, resulting in a total absence of orders for products for next season. And when you consider the very long production lead times that prevail in Asia today, this clearly raises questions, especially as Barça is Nike’s only big club in this situation at the moment.
Barça, whose strategy is baffling more than one Nike executive, is looking for a new equipment supplier to buy out the remaining 5 years of Nike’s contract with Barça. Nike’s historic rival, adidas, is not interested, especially as they already have Real Madrid in Spain and have no desire to own the two biggest clubs in La Liga. But there are two outfitters capable of pulling off such a splurge, namely Puma and New Balance. The American brand, which was robbed of Liverpool by Nike in 2020, is still looking for a top club to reinvest spectacularly in football, while Puma, which has already taken Portugal from Nike from next summer, wants to continue its raid on the big clubs. The German outfitter is the brand on the rise in football, and the results and their strategy can only prove them right, whether it’s OM, Manchester City or Neymar.
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