Why is Lyon’s Rayan Cherki available on the cheap? | OneFootball

Rayan Cherki (21) has had the most impressive campaign of his career. The Olympique Lyonnais forward has always shown promise, but it has remained promise for several years, with the playmaker always struggling for consistency in output.

That changed this season. He has 12 goals and 19 assists in 43 matches in all competitions, including eight assists in Lyon’s run to the quarter-finals of the UEFA Europa League. It begs the question: why is he available for just €22.5m? That figure was reported by Le Parisien on Tuesday, with the publication reporting that Liverpool, Manchester City, and Tottenham Hotspur are all interested in signing the player, whose contract expires at the end of next season.

A clause in Cherki’s contract

It is Cherki’s contract, more so than the dire and well-documented financial situation at Lyon, that sees Cherki available for such a low price. Cast your mind back to last summer and the France youth international was on the verge of a move away from OL. An agreement had all but been struck with Paris Saint-Germain before the player then opted to join Borussia Dortmund instead. The only issue was that the Bundesliga side hadn’t reached an agreement with OL and never did.

Ultimately, therefore, Cherki would remain with his formative club. However, he had less than a year left on his contract. OL could not afford to lose him on a free and so there was a stand-off that saw the player ostracised from the first-team set-up.

He missed the first four games of the Ligue 1 campaign amid the stand-off before an agreement was reached towards the end of September, which allowed his re-integration. On the day of the signing of his new deal, a simple one-year extension with the option for a further year, he then played against Olympique de Marseille.

In order to break the impasse, not truly in anyone’s interest, compromises were made. One of those included this agreement that Cherki could leave in the summer for a fee of €22.5m. It is a low fee, in hindsight, for a player who this year truly delivered on his promise, however, it was only through such a compromise that Cherki played at all for Lyon this season.

GFFN | Luke Entwistle