UPDATE—Giuseppe Rossi bids farewell to Villarreal

UPDATE: Villarreal returned to practice today and, at the same time, bid farewell to Giuseppe Rossi. As noted below, it had already been reported that Rossi would not be offered a Villarreal contract. He has bid adieu to the club and was not at training today.

Today’s EPM reports that Villarreal have decided not to offer Giuseppe Rossi a contract. The reason given is the ‘high level of competition in the first team’ as well as the numbers of attackers we have (in addition to Toko Ekambi, Gerard and Bacca, we can play Ontiveros and Samu Chukwueze up front as well).

The timing of this announcement suggests that Villarreal are not worried about losing either Bacca or Samu in the January transfer window, but also that Rossi just hasn’t been able to impress enough in training for Villarreal to consider he’d get any playing time.

Sad if so.