Leicester City appear to have made a final decision on Youri Tielemans’ short-term future, according to reports. The Times’s Charlotte Duncker suggested last weekend that the Foxes are willing to maintain the services of the Belgian midfielder for the remainder of the 2022/23 season, allowing him to leave the King Power Stadium on a free transfer at the end of his current contract.
When Claude Puel elected to make Tielemans’ loan move from AS Monaco permanent in 2019, giving the green light for the club to part with approximately £40million, the intention was abundantly clear: for the midfielder’s stock to rise at LCFC meaning his eventual, inevitable sale to a European giant would land them a healthy profit. The way things have transpired, this is no longer the case, in spite of Tielemans’ three year term largely being viewed as a success.
Whichever way this is spun, this is not a good scenario, at all. discarding an elite playmaker, after taking him on as a barely proven, inexperienced personality and turning him into one of the most sought after talents in world football, and allowing him to depart the club for a transfer fee of zero, is an unmitigated disaster for Leicester City Football Club.
The argument can be put forward that players wield more power than ever before as they can almost force clubs to let them run down their contract. Yet this is more of an indictment on the state of the sport, and does little to soften the blow to the pursestrings at the East Midlands outfit.
It’s easy to say this in hindsight, but if the City hierarchy always knew and accepted that Tielemans was a valuable asset that would absolutely be sold to one of Europe’s elite, then they certainly were both greedy in their expectations of a stunning third season, and naive to think that a talent such as his would be grateful enough for the opportunity to ignore advances from elsewhere and sign a new long-term deal.
Perhaps they were drawn in by the timing of the World Cup, thinking that the Belgian would want his future secure and sorted this summer so he could focus on helping his nation succeed, and that he’d rather commit his future to the club than risk being a squad player elsewhere and jeopardising his place in Roberto Martinez’s plans. Whatever the rationale behind not cashing in after the 2020/21 season, which would have seen Tielemans’ farewell be his stunning FA Cup final winning goal, such a decision has left the club in limbo at a time where its financial strategy is severely lacking in clarity or certainty.
In any case, it appears interest in his services this summer has cooled, particularly from Arsenal who have long been the front runners to secure the middleman’s signature. The scenario the Foxes have found themselves in is far from ideal – in fact it’s the opposite, with serious doubts about four of it’s key players, combined with the fact that it has failed to bring a single major signing through the gates of Seagrave all summer.
For a club that has gained plaudits all across the globe for the way it has been so sensibly and astutely run for the best part of a decade, the way it has defied the odds and rallied against the establishment, it is quickly becoming a topic of ridicule amongst its own supporters. And that includes supporters of other teams and the wider media landscape.
Whether the decisions to keep Tielemans on when his market value at the club would never be higher, to hold tight on incomings for as long as it has this window, or to fail to adequately replace its stalwart goalkeeper are all part of a calculated plan, we’ll have to wait and see. But for now, the strategy appears to have gone awry, and it needs fixing if City wants to be taken seriously again.