“Under no circumstances should 27 be considered old. But football’s transfer market rarely deals in conventional wisdom, and Arsenal’s big-money move for the 27-year-old Viktor Gyokeres stands out as something of an old-age outlier, with the rest of the market pouring its resources into fresher-faced talent. Liverpool’s capture of Florian Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen this summer makes him the third player aged 22 or under to be signed by a Premier League club for £100million ($136.4m) or more in the past four seasons, joining Chelsea’s Moises Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez. Young talent is clearly in demand in the 2020s, but just how much have Premier League clubs shifted their recruitment towards attracting the shiny new wonderkids? …”
NY Times/The Athletic