Greatest Of All Legends - Chapter 333: Considerations for a New Home I
Chapter 333: Considerations for a New Home I
The dinner for the Super Eagles was held at the Radisson Hotel where the players were staying and it wasn’t something held in a formal setting.
The players arrived at the private room for the dinner in white T-shirts and shorts with the Super Eagles Logo on their right breast.
The governor arrived a bit later and after a few festivities where Jason was called out and formally welcomed to the team while also taking a few pictures, the governor left as it was already quite late and the players got to demolish the food that had been prepared for them.
The table was lively and conversations were being held at every corner of the table between groups of players.
Jason was seated beside Osimhen and Zaidu, but Alex Iwobi and Ahmed Musa were seated nearby as well and were in a conversation.
As the most experienced person among all of them, Ahmed Musa had started by giving the four of them advice on their careers since all of them were at pretty big clubs around Europe.
Alex Iwobi had moved from Arsenal to Everton the previous year for a fee of 24 million pounds, Osimhen had joined Napoli from Losc Lille at a price of 70 million pounds, and Zaidu had joined Porto from Santa Clara.
This made all of them pretty big transfers and Jason paled in comparison to them because he had been signed to Porto on a free transfer, but Porto was a pretty big team as well and the offers were already coming in for him making everyone sure that his exit from Porto wasn’t too far off.
“Have you considered where you’ll want to play next?” Alex asked Jason as the conversation had turned to him since he was currently the one with the highest likelihood for a transfer in the coming transfer windows.
“… To be honest, I don’t know because I’ll have to get an offer from some clubs first before beginning to consider my choices, but I hope for somewhere exciting where I can play Champions League football at least,” Jason replied.
He wasn’t telling the whole truth as Adele had already been contacted by a few teams asking about his availability for a transfer in the coming transfer window, or in the summer transfer window of the coming year, but he wasn’t lying about not having made a decision.
Adele had already been contacted by Manchester United, Paris Saint Germain, Athletico Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, and a few other teams, but those four were the big names that had contacted Adele and that was already enough to surprise Jason.
Out of those four big names however, Manchester United seemed like they were the ones who wanted him the most as the level of enthusiasm they showed was much more than the rest, and they were willing to pull out all the stops to acquire him in the summer transfer window of the coming year… or at least that’s what he was told.
Paris Saint Germain had just added his name to their list of probable transfers since they had money lying around and could go into the market for whoever they wished, though that was causing them more bad than good.
Athletico Madrid seemed a bit more serious, but they wanted Jason on a free transfer instead and weren’t willing to spend any money on Jason whose price had been inflated way too much and would leave a huge dent on their finances.
Borussia Dortmund had a bit more enthusiasm and was willing to commit to signing Jason as long as they could either reduce his price to a reasonable level or raise enough funds to pull through with the deal.
Jason hadn’t been able to make his decision as there weren’t any final offers on the table yet and it was still a long way till the summer transfer window of the coming year since he didn’t plan to leave Porto in the middle of the season.
However, if these were the final options he were stuck with when the time to make the decision came, he would rank his choices with Manchester United coming in as his first choice, Borussia Dortmund as second, Athletico Madrid as the third, and Paris Saint Germain as the last.
His reasoning for this was simple and though some of it was due to a bit of his bias, he thought his reasoning was objective enough.
Despite Manchester United’s lack of success in the domestic league and on the continental stage ever since Alex Ferguson retired, joining the Manchester United team would have him compete at one of the top levels in the world and the team wasn’t a bad one.
Maybe he could even win a few trophies there.
It also helped that they wanted him there quite a bit… also, Manchester United was a major part of Cristiano Ronaldo’s origin story and Jason wanted to feel the atmosphere at Old Trafford and see if he could recreate some of his idol’s achievements in the red shirt.
Borussia Dortmund and Athletico Madrid were in a close tie for Jason’s second choice because they were very good options as well.
One was in the German Bundesliga where the physicality of the game was at one of the peak levels of competitiveness and intensity, while the other was in a league where the two behemoths of the game that housed the two GOATs of the current generation were… of course, Ronaldo had left Madrid already, but that didn’t do much to Real Madrid’s status.
However, the lack of effort on the part of Athletico Madrid who only wished to sign Jason on free was not something Jason wanted.
If he was going to sign for them on a free transfer, then that would mean he would have to stay an extra season at Porto because his contract didn’t end until January 2022 and Porto had a six-month extension clause to keep him with them till July 2022 which was something Jason would rather avoid, hence his decision to put Borussia Dortmund above Athletico Madrid.
As for Paris Saint Germain… Jason didn’t know where to start.