After Alessandro Florenzi, what name will come out of Leonardo’s hat? The right side of AS Rome had never been mentioned, until two days before his signing. Same surprise, including in the corridors of PSG, for the return of Alexandre Letellier (third goalkeeper). A week before the end of the transfer window, PSG must still recruit at least two or three players, most of them in the form of a loan with an option to buy.
The names continue to rain, as do the denials that we collect while trying to verify the solidity of most of the supposed tracks… The results of the Leonardo method, already seen last summer with the raids carried out at the last minute on Mauro Icardi and Keylor Navas.
When he begins a discussion on the transfer window with one or more agents, Leonardo sets some rules of the game. The first of them consists in total discretion over the operation. “If something comes out, it will kill us,” worried an agent involved in a media file in the summer. “He explains that the slightest leak in the press could cause the transfer to fail,” said another intermediary who worked on the case of a foreign player whose name has never been mentioned publicly. “If things are not moving, it is also because he works alone, he does not trust anyone”, continues the same interlocutor.
It is a little the message sent to the actors of the recruitment of the Parisian club. The Brazilian sports director had made understand to the men put in place or maintained by Antero Henrique that he liked working with his own networks.
“He has a way of working which is his”
The recruiting cell, dispossessed of the Portuguese’s close guard, is now dormant. Only the discreet Angelo Castellazzi, Leo’s assistant, very involved in the management of the training center, is in the secret of the gods. The Italian attends meetings, often a bit in the shadows, which sometimes intrigues potential recruits.
Already, during the first visit of the sports director from 2011 to 2013, he had made the new PSG in the greatest secrecy. Alain Roche, the former sporting director, was his office neighbor with no idea of most of the files Leo was working on. The former Parisian defender had let go when he left: “He has a way of working which is his. He is someone who works alone. He was my supervisor. I just had to accept. “
The transfer window is a kind of one man show for the Parisian leader. Leonardo receives the proposals, sorts them, maintains contact, without ever indicating to his interlocutors at which position their player appears on his list. It puts leads to sleep, delays without making any promises, until those around a potential target understand that it is, or not, a priority.
“I don’t know what Leo is doing”
This is how Belgian side Timothy Castagne waited for a sign from Paris until the last moment before committing to Leicester. The score played by Leonardo can sometimes intrigue his interlocutors, to whom he likes to repeat that he is reachable 7 days a week and 24 hours a day. Or even worry them when the market is so difficult and that PSG is as penniless as this year . “I don’t know what Leo is doing, he seems to be in a deep sleep,” a regular interlocutor warned last week.
Be reassured, the boss of the Parisian sports sector is not idle, even if it means dispersing. In recent hours, he himself called second-class European clubs to try to place some young people from the training center in need of a way out. By next Monday, from the countless mass of past phone calls, from the mountain of files in his office, the Brazilian will have to bring out the two to four good picks supposed to allow Paris to at least confirm his level of last season. The “Leonardo time” promises to be hot.
