With the Rangers target expected to leave his current club this summer, the debate over where he will end up next continues to rage back home.
To some, the pace and intensity of the Bundesliga would be ideal. Borussia Dortmund, for instance, are in the market for a Marco Reus replacement. And an attacking midfielder with admirers at Ibrox could certainly go some way to offsetting the loss of one of German football’s biggest icons.
To others, Italy’s Serie A is the ideal environment.
“He has all the qualities to succeed (in Serie A). Personally, I would like to see him in Italy,” Franco Camozzi, who once worked as an advisor to Russian giants Spartak Moscow, tells RB Sport.
“I hope this happens.”
Rangers are fans. ofKrasnodar ace Eduard Spertsyan
Eduard Spertsyan may hope so too.
A move from the Russian Premier League to the Scottish Premiership feels like a sidewards step at best, really, at least in comparison to the respective top flights of Italy and Germany.
HITC have also been informed that, even if Rangers did convince Spertsyan to continue his development at Ibrox and even if they could meet his £13 million asking price, the UK government have taken a rather dim view of doing business with clubs based in Russia amid the ongoing Ukraine conflict.
Chelsea, for instance, were prevented from signing Arsen Zakharyan before he swapped Dinamo Moscow for Real Sociedad. Tottenham Hotspur also had to sell Davinson Sanchez to Galatasaray rather than Spartak.
Whether the Italian government takes a similar approach when the transfer market begins in earnest, time will tell. But, amid reports claiming that Spertsyan’s agent Rafaela Pimenta is in talks with a number of Serie A clubs, Italy’s big hitters appear to be queuing up to remove their proverbial hats from the metaphorical ring.
Juventus and Lazio rule themselves out
First, it was Fiorentina chief Daniele Prade.
“Interest in Spertsyan? This is not true,” Prade tells Sport24.
Then, Juventus director Cristiano Guintoli had his say.
“We are not interested in Spertsyan,” confirms a man who was largely responsible for building Napoli’s brilliant 2023 Scudetto-winning side.
Earlier this week, Lazio boss Angelo Fabiani was similarly dismissive.
“I know that Spertsyan is a very good player,” Fabiani told Match TV. “But I’ll tell you that we are not interested in him.”
Despite an outstanding campaign – Spertsyan the driving force behind a Krasnodar side who ran Zenit St Petersburg very close in an enthralling title race – it appears that the fight to secure the box-crashing Armenia international is not quite as fierce as we might have expected.
That is not to say Rangers have a clear run at Spertsyan. Juventus and Fiorentina make up only two of Serie A’s top clubs, while both Krasnodar’s £13 million asking price and the difficulties of doing Russian-based deals make a summer switch to Glasgow unlikely in the extreme.
“Certainly (he can get a big move to Europe)! This is Edo! When I was still working at Krasnodar, he was a little behind the other guys physically, but in understanding the game he was ahead of everyone,” former deputy head coach of the Krasnodar academy, Nikola Elich, tells Sport Express.
“(Spertsyan) is one of the best midfielders in Europe.”
Maybe so, finding a way into one of the best clubs in Europe is proving to be quite the challenge.
