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After agreeing to a deal with AC Milan earlier in the month, attacking midfielder Suso has today completed his long expected move to AC Milan as the 21-year-old heads off in search of regular playing time after a handful of seasons where he was tantalizingly close to making the breakthrough with Liverpool.
With his contract expiring at the end of the season, the only question had been whether the two clubs could come to an agreement over a fee that would see him make the switch now instead of in six months. With an unconfirmed but believed to be nominal fee slightly higher than the training compensation Liverpool would have been owed in the summer now agreed, Suso has completed that switch today.
The young Spaniard rose up through the Liverpool youth ranks alongside Raheem Sterling following his arrival from Cadiz in 2010 but never managed to take his chances quite as well as his fellow academy graduate. Still, it was always clear that Suso had a great deal of promise, and the club held on to him last summer rather than selling him in the hopes he would sign a new deal.
He never did, and ever since the summer window closed, his eventual departure for Serie A and AC Milan has seemed something of a foregone conclusion. Given Liverpool’s weak negotiating position, with only six months left on his Liverpool deal and a pre-contract agreed with Milan, any talk of buy-back or sell-on clauses is misguided hope on the part of fans.
Suso is now a Milan player, and Liverpool are likely to have received a fee short of £1M for him. It isn’t how many thought his Liverpool career would end when he arrived from Cadiz and showed signs of great promise, and it was clear the club still thought highly of him, but in the end, if a player wishes to move and is determined to run down their contract, there is little that can be done to stop them.
