Fiorentina have offered Arsenal half of what they initially agreed to sign Lucas Torreira this summer, according to a report.
Di Marzio report that Fiorentina haven’t given up on signing Lucas Torreira this summer, despite failing to activate the €15m purchase clause they agreed with Arsenal when they took him on loan.
Instead, the Serie A side are trying to convince Arsenal to let the midfielder go for an offer of just €7-8m.
Di Marzio add that if that doesn’t work, Fiorentina will look to sign free agent Florian Grillitsch instead.
None of this is particularly surprising. It was pretty clear from the reporting at the time of Fiorentina’s decision not to activate Torreira’s purchase clause that they still wanted to buy him, they just wanted a big discount.
But there’s no reason for Arsenal to give them one. Torreira played regularly, he played well, he helped Fiorentina return to European football for the first time in over half a decade. €15m was a fair fee.
Not to mention the fact that various other clubs are now in the mix for the Uruguay international.
TMW report that Lazio have made contact to try and steal ahead of Fiorentina for Torreira. La Nazione add that there are at least a couple of proposals to sign Torreira from Italian teams. If Fiorentina won’t pay up, Arsenal should sell elsewhere.
Fiorentina’s initial decision not to activate Torreira’s purchase clause went down badly with the supporters, who had voted Torreira their Player of the Month three times in the first four months of 2022.
After that news broke, Torreira’s agent Pablo Bentancur spoke to Fiorentina News to explain that the issue was that the Serie A side came to an agreement with Arsenal and Torreira and then tried to renegotiate with both of them.
“The basic problem is that Lucas (Torreira) earned a higher salary at Arsenal than he took in Florence,” Bentancur said.
“When we agreed on the €1.5 million loan with Arsenal last summer, I got from the English club that Fiorentina would not pay that money if Lucas played at least 25 games (he reached 31 in the league).
“With this, we set the option-to-buy at €15 million, payable in 6 installments of €2.5m by 2025.
“We had agreed on a (player) contract with Fiorentina for the coming seasons of €2.7 million net a year. Fiorentina, however, now wanted to lower both [Torreira’s] salary and the cost of the transfer.
“We couldn’t accept, and Arsenal didn’t accept either. Now Lucas has a contract with the Gunners until June 30, 2023.”