On July 1, Beijing time, Vincent Duluc, Hugo Guillemet and Loïc Tanzi, famous reporters of the French media "Team Daily", jointly wrote an article revealing the inside story of Lyon's deposed prince Cherki joining Dortmund. According to them, the reason why the Bundesliga Hornets were able to cut off the beard from the hands of Grand Paris was actually a No. 10 shirt.
The 20-year-old, who came through Lyon's academy, was promoted to the first team back in January 2020 and has scored three goals in 13 games in all competitions. In the just-concluded 2023/24 season, Cherki had a poor first half and was criticised by manager Grosso. However, his form improved significantly in the second half of the season, and he finally handed over 39 games, 3 goals and 9 assists. However, with only one year left on his contract, Lyon didn't mind sending him away. After all, during the period when he was pressed to the bench, Lyon's record was very good, which also made the club not have any psychological burden to let go of the academy prince.
At the beginning, Grand Paris extended an olive branch to Cherki, who was very impressed by the blueprint drawn by Grand Paris director Luis Campos, and the two also exchanged details through video. However, Paris do not want to spend too much on Cherki, and they want to buy the 20-year-old for a low price of 15 million euros, but Lyon does not accept it. The endless bickering between the two sides gave Dortmund a chance to cut off halfway.
Dortmund know a lot more about Cherki than they do about Paris. They used the likes of Dembele, Jadon Sancho, Erling Haaland and Bellingham as examples to show Cherki their strengths in developing attacking players. Of course, more importantly, Dortmund promised Cherki the number 10 shirt that symbolizes the heart of the team, which is obviously a great respect. In this case, Cherki was clearly moved.
Therefore, Cherky called off negotiations with Grand Paris and turned to discuss joining with Dortmund. This was a bit of a surprise to Grand Paris. One thing to say, the salary given by the Ligue 1 tycoon is obviously much higher than that of Dortmund, who is shy in his pocket. But for a young player, it is obviously more important to have a better platform for development. In this regard, Dortmund, known as a star processing factory, is clearly incomparable to Grand Paris.
However, if the promise of the No.10 shirt is true, it also means that the veteran Jadon Sancho, who joined on loan from Manchester United in the winter window last season, has no chance to continue to hold hands with his old club. Because in the half season of his return, Sancho wore Dort's number 10 shirt. Of course, this is not surprising. After all, Manchester United's asking price for Sancho is as high as £50 million, which is obviously unaffordable for Dort. Although they also wanted Sancho to stay, there was no way to do it if the wallet did not agree.