You’ve probably seen it by now. Fabrizio Romano reported this morning that Fiorentina will add Tottenham Hotspur winger Manor Solomon on loan with an option to buy (I can’t find any numbers right now but they’ll doubtless emerge in the coming days); the Israel international will have his temporary stay at Villarreal cut short to make the move to Florence. On a side note, it sure is gross that Romano, who has no shortage of money and contacts to get actual photographs, is using generative AI to create
images for his announcements.
There’s a lot going on here. Let’s start with the calcio side. Solomon, 26, left boyhood club Maccabi Petah Tikva for Shakhtar Donetsk in 2019. He had a loan to Fulham in 2022 before running his contract down and signing with Spurs on a Bosman in 2023. From there, he was at Leeds on loan last year before moving to Villarreal on a similar deal this past summer, where he’s taken the number 6 shirt, which is not the correct sort of number for a winger.
A right-footed left winger, Solomon is good both physically and technically. He’s primarily a dribbler who can cut inside to set up teammates or threaten the goal himself. He was prolific at Leeds in the Championship, scoring 10 goals and adding 12 assists (both career highs), but hasn’t matched that statistical output in any of the top flight leagues he’s played in. Between his pedigree and his recent employers, though, he’s clearly talented and can be a useful cog when he’s on the pitch.
That’s really been the story for him, though. Since the 2020-2021 season, he’s only played more than 20 league games twice. Knee injuries kept him on the shelf for the better part of two years while calf and hamstring problems knocked him out for nearly 4 months last year as well. He’s struggled for minutes with the Yellow Submarine, starting just 1 match and coming off the bench 11 times to average 32 minutes per outing. His 1 goal and 4 assists look gaudy but 3 of the assists came in the Copa del Rey against 5th-tier Ciudad de Lucena.
If Paolo Vanoli wants to keep using a system with wingers, Solomon makes some sense. His pace and directness could provide a good balance with Albert Guðmundsson’s desire for more intricate passing, and adding a player of his physical abilities will at least offer stretch opposing defenses vertically, offering Moise Kean some relief in that department. Tactically, he’ll be a good fit if he can stay healthy and meld with his new teammates.
Fabio Paratici was responsible for bringing Solomon to north London, and although his ban due to the Plusvalenza scandal meant that he was suspended from all soccer-related activities before the transfer occurred, he was doubtless instrumental in identifying the player and persuading him to join Spurs on a free. This move could open a new pipeline from White Hart Lane to the Artemio Franchi as the soon-to-be Fiorentina DS begins pulling the strings.
Due to non-soccer related circumstances, of course, this move is attracting a lot of attention on social media and will continue to do so. Due to the nature of social media (which is almost entirely bad), much of that attention is negative. I would like to remind everyone that it’s possible to simultaneously believe that 1) the genocide the Israeli government is perpetrating against the Palestinian people is abhorrent, and 2) a lot of people are using this as an excuse to air their reprehensible antisemitism.
Even in the best of all possible worlds (not this one), he won’t single-handedly save the season. On the other hand, neither will any one player. It’s going to take a lot of people, some of whom are already at the club and some of whom are not, working together to fix this edition of the Viola, and even then they’ll need a lot of planets to align perfectly.
