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It started with a proposal of barely two million euros, then it rose to a value above three, it got stuck in the internal differences of Santa Clara itself, it will have been done for a total amount of 3.8 million euros even before let the season end. Hidemasa Morita He was confirmed this Friday as Sporting’s third reinforcement for the 2022/23 season, filling a vacancy that will actually be two in the Verdiblanca midfield with the departure of Matheus Nunes in addition to the already planned João Palhinha.
The second Japanese player to arrive at Alvalade after striker Junya Tanaka (35 games in a season and a half from 2014 to 2016, with seven goals and three assists) landed on the night of the 21st in Lisbon, after making a stopover in Paris on a trip from Japan , where he stayed after being part of the work of the team that will be present at the World Cup in a “group of death” with Germany, Spain and Costa Rica, and fulfilled all the usual routines before signing a contract between medical examinations and statements to the club’s media, being presented only on July 1 due to a bureaucratic issue of entering the fiscal year 2022/23. there’s a lot to the average was expected in Alcochete, having even committed to shorten the vacation period to shorten the period of adaptation to the new reality of the national runner-up.
Born in Osaka, Morita completed the latter part of his training at Ryutsu Keizai University, making his J-League debut with Kawasaki Frontale, averaging more than 35 games per season. In 2020 the international had opportunity to go to England but the fact that Hull City is in the second national level ended up making him accept the proposal to go to the Azores and Santa Clara, where he played 21 games in 2020/21 before the affirmation season in 2021/22 with 38 matches. In the period in which he was in Lisbon without appearing, the Japanese was still associated with Galatasaray.
“Morita has a lot of technical quality, he is a Japanese player and that requires a lot of work. He is someone who can play 6 and 8. He is an excellent player. It is good for Santa Clara to have players of that quality”, said Rúben Amorim, coach of the lions, in the prelude to the reception for the Azoreans that closed the last League. “He is a clearly differentiated player, who does not show pressure, who is very good at finding spaces. He is Japanese and had difficulty communicating, but he communicates with his feet. He is a thinker. With us he was always looking for play, almost like a 6, and he always did well in that position. He is a player who discovers spaces and we balance with the [Anderson] Carvalho because it was Morita who took over the game. He never hides from dueling but he is not a Straw. But it can be combined with him, for example,” Mário Silva, the coach who finished the season in charge of the Azoreans, later commented in an interview with Channel 11.
Even so, and contrary to what was initially expected, Morita will not be the only midfielder to arrive at Alvalade this summer. As El Observador had written, the idea of the lions was to sell only João Palhinha in this transfer market, something that had been agreed in January when the Verdiblanco SAD rejected the proposals made by the midfielder. And that will happen, with Fulham managing to convince those responsible for Sporting with a fourth proposal that, between fixed and variable values, can exceed 20 million euros (with 18 million always guaranteed up front). However, the offers that came for Matheus Nunes ended up shuffling these initial accounts, with the Leonese team waiting for the offer of 45 million plus five for the midfielder’s goals to be formalized to sell the pass of the Portuguese international to Bruno’s Wolverhampton Lage -something that not even the recent trip of an English club manager to Argentina by midfielder Enzo Fernández seems to call into question for now.
If this proposal is confirmed by Matheus Nunes, there is a guarantee that another midfielder will arrive for Rúben Amorim’s squad, once again the national market is among one of the possibilities and with a player who has been referenced for a long time and who has already worked with the leonine trainer : Al Musrati, 26-year-old Libyan international who in the past has been the subject of surveys but without concrete proposals to Sp. Braga but who, in this context of the Portuguese international’s departure, could gain strength as a successor, joining Ugarte, Morita, Daniel Bragança, Dário Essugo and probably Diogo Abreu, a former FC Porto player who should at least do the pre-season with the main team. However, despite all the news about it, sources linked to the lions deny any advance by the Minho player.
Source: Observadora
