Everton are being linked to former Real Madrid player Mariano Diaz. Diaz is currently plying his trade for the Ligue 1 side Lyon. He has been prolific for them this season as he has scored 18 goals in 31 appearances in the French League. He joined the French outfit in 2017 after not being able to break into the star-studded lineup of Real Madrid.
Everton were expected to challenge for a Europa League spot this season as they invested good money in the transfer market to get players like Sigurdsson, Pickford, Klaassen etc. They were managed by the highly rated Dutchman Ronald Koeman. But they started off poorly and were hovering in the relegation zone. All the pre-season hopes soon died down and Koeman was shown the door by the board. Sam Allardyce took over from him and has guided the Merseyside club to safety as they are in top half of the table.
This was being touted as a breakthrough season for Everton but things didn’t go to plan. Nevertheless, they are surely going to try further and try and improve upon the next season. They need to be patient and realise that just buying new players doesn’t guarantee success.
Diaz is an out and out centre-forward who has good pace and skills up his sleeve. He was picked by Real Madrid C team in 2012 and then slowly he made his way to the Real Madrid senior team as he impressed Zidane with his performance for the reserve teams. He scored 27 goals in 32 appearances for Real Madrid reserves in the 2015-16 campaign and such performances were hard to ignore as Zidane promoted him to the senior squad.
However, as expected he was confined to the bench for most of his time with the senior squad. He managed just 8 appearances in the La Liga. He went on to score five times in all competitions for the Los Blancos. To find regular playing time he moved to the French heavyweights Lyon and he started his career in France with a bang as he scored a brace on his debut.
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Everton recently acquired the services of Cenk Tosun in the January transfer window and he has done well for The Toffees in the short time. Everton also has an able option in Dominic Calvert Lewin and Niasse on the bench. Diaz is a good striker and will certainly go on to improve their squad but Everton will have to shell out around 30 million euros to get him. It will be highly unlikely that the Merseyside club will again pay that kind of money for a new striker as they got Tosun for pretty much the same amount of money. But one cannot count the move out as Everton try to move up the pecking order in the Premier League in the next season.
