Roma’s Bryan Cristante has been linked with a potential move to Everton in a part-exchange deal for Beto
Everton have been linked with a move for Bryan Cristante. But what could the Roma midfielder potentially offer the Blues?
Sport Witness cites AS Roma Live as claiming that the Italy international could be heading to Goodison Park with out-of-favour striker Beto heading in the opposite direction in a part-exchange deal with a “slight adjustment” to suit Everton.
Cristante, who has been capped 43 times for Italy, scoring two international goals, tormented Everton when they met his then Atalanta side in the UEFA Europa League back in the 2017/18 season when he was on loan from Benfica. He netted the third goal to seal a 3-0 victory for the Serie A outfit in Bergamo to put Ronald Koeman on the back foot in September before firing in the visitors’ first two strikes when bagging a brace in the 5-1 thrashing of caretaker manager David Unsworth’s men in the return match at Goodison Park in November.
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Also holding a Canadian passport through his father, who hails from Toronto, Cristante, who turns 30 on March 3, was born in San Vito al Tagliamento in Italy’s north east, in between Venice and Trieste. He is named after another famous Bryan but it’s not fellow midfield dynamo Bryan Robson, who was dubbed ‘Captain Marvel’ when dominating the engine room for Manchester United and England in the 1980s but rather another son of County Durham – like Howard Kendall, Harry Catterick and Jordan Pickford – singer Bryan Ferry, who like the current Everton goalkeeper, hails from Washington.
Starting his career with AC Milan having come through their youth system, Cristante made just five senior appearances for I Rossoneri before moving to Portuguese champions Benfica a decade ago. Turning out 20 times for the Lisbon-based outfit, there were loan spells back in Italy with Palermo, Pescara and Atalanta before the latter brought him home permanently in the summer of 2018.
As soon as that deal was done, Cristante was immediately loaned to Roma for a year with a compulsory purchase option that was taken up the following February and so far, he has played 296 times for them, scoring on 16 occasions. Now preparing to work under a fourth coach this year (Claudio Ranieri) after Jose Mourinho, Daniele De Rossi and Ivan Juric, Cristante has remained a regular in the side and has turned out 17 times in all competitions this term.
Using Comparisonator’s Virtual Transfer tool, Cristante is calculated as being a better fit than the incumbent player in his position for no fewer than eight Premier League clubs, although Everton are not one of them. He is given an Artificial Intelligence suitability weight score of 164.59 which tops Pape Matar Sarr of Tottenham Hotspur (148.1); Mario Lemina and Tommy Doyle of Wolverhampton Wanderers (142.73 and 65.15 respectively); Yasin Ayari and Jack Hinshelwood of Brighton & Hove Albion (141.83 and 131.16 respectively); Christian Norgaard of Brentford (140.11); Joe Willock, Sandro Tonali and Sean Longstaff of Newcastle United (136.9, 130.64 and 103.22 respectively); Ross Barkley of Aston Villa (136.14); Jefferson Lerma and Daichi Kamada of Crystal Palace (118.7 and 111.66 respectively) plus Matheus Fernandes of Southampton (112.56).
What Cristante potentially offers Everton is mastery of an area they’ve struggled in for several years with his distribution skills as the Blues are currently bottom of the Premier League this season for both passes (329 behind leaders Manchester City on 627) and successful passes (262, with Pep Guardiola’s side again on top with 568). Using the Virtual Transfer tool to correlate his figures in Serie A this season, when it comes to successful passes in the final third of the pitch, out of his Premier League peers, only Youri Tielemans of Aston Villa (11.43) and Samy Morsy of Ipswich Town (7.33) can top his figure of 6.88 per 90 minutes and for actual passes in the final third attempted, just Tielemans (14.71) betters his 9.38.
Cristante’s 50.13 passes per 90 minutes is more than all the central midfielders in the English top flight other than Tielemans (62.57); Arsenal’s Thomas Partey (52) and Manchester City’s Bernardo Silva (50.6). When it comes to successful passes, he is also a respectable sixth with 43 in a category again led by Tielemans on 54, the same position he holds for long passes (3.75, behind leader Lucas Paqueta of West Ham United on 7.57); passes in the opposition half (27, behind leader Silva on 38) and successful passes in the opposition half (24, behind leader Tielemans on 33.57).
For all the upheaval at Roma, the prospect of Cristante embarking on another stint abroad over 10 years on from when he joined Benfica, is an intriguing one, as is the idea of the Friedkin Group exchanging players between their clubs if the Roma owners’ proposed takeover of Everton goes through next month as they hope. The Blues shelled out £25.8million to take Beto from Udinese in August last year but while he has been a success in Italy before, netting double figures in back-to-back seasons before switching to England, the move might represent a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire for the Guinea-Bissau international.
Beto currently finds himself playing second fiddle to Dominic Calvert-Lewin at Goodison Park but a transfer to the Eternal City might not actually boost his chances of obtaining additional playing time. The Friedkins spent €38million (approximately £31.65m) on Girona’s Ukraine international striker Artem Dovbyk in August and he remains the team’s main man up front.
*Comparisonator is a football data comparison tool from 271 professional leagues around the world which compares players and clubs by utilising over 100 different parameters. Click here for more details.
