Grant-Leon Ranos was one of the players absent from Borussia Monchengladbach’s first training session on Sunday. The club released the striker for a few days at the beginning of preparations so that he could continue searching for a new club. The transfer should be officially completed soon.
On Thursday, Sky reported that Ranos was moving to Spanish second division club Tenerife. There he will receive a contract until 2028, which, if promoted, will be extended for another year. Our editors can confirm that the change is just a formality. For Ranos, this is his final farewell after three years on the Lower Rhine. The 22-year-old still has a contract until 2027, but if he were to stay, he would not play any role in the professionals next season.
Gladbach is expected to realize around 300,000 euros from the sale. According to Sky, the contract also includes a resale clause. In case of departure, Borussia will also retain the annual salary, which, according to our editorial staff, is about 600,000 euros. Ranos joined Gladbach from Bayern Munich II on a free transfer three years ago but has yet to make his latest breakthrough in the Bundesliga.
His loan spells in the 2nd Bundesliga to Kaiserslautern (55 minutes, no goals) in the second half of the previous season and to Eintracht Braunschweig (330 minutes, no goals) in the second half of the year also failed.
There have recently been rumors of Holstein Kiel’s interest, but nothing concrete has come to fruition. Now Ranos, who trained with Hannover 96 and Borussia Dortmund before arriving in Munich, should be playing regularly again in his first spell abroad.
Ranos has more international caps than Bundesliga appearances
Most of the holiday photos that Ranos shared on his Instagram channel showed him wearing an Armenian national team jersey. Ranos has now played 26 international matches for his home country – four more international matches than the competitive games for Gladbach’s professionals. He has scored five times for the Armenia national team so far. These included a goal in a surprise 2-1 win over Ireland in World Cup qualifying last September.
Over the past three years, Ranos has had little reason to celebrate in a Gladbach shirt. There were 22 competitive games and he was not included in the starting line-up even once. In his first official game for Dortmund he scored in a 7-0 win over TuS Bersenbrück in the first round of the cup, and he scored his second goal for Dortmund in a 4-6 defeat to Eintracht Frankfurt last autumn.
His numbers are better in the under-23s, but he is almost overqualified for regional league football: eight goals and ten assists in 17 games prove that Ranos can reliably produce at some level thanks to his technique and ability to make his mark in small areas.
At least he was not saddled with the burden of transfer fees, as was once the case with external talents such as Andreas Poulsen (€4.5 million transfer fee, one competitive game), Julio Villalba (€1.25 million, two competitive games) or Keenan Bennetts (€2.25 million, six competitive games). However, Dortmund and Ranos probably expected more from a partnership that has now come to an end.