Everton’s move for Everton appears to have ground to a halt
Everton’s supposed pursuit of Gremio forward Everton Soares looks to have ground to a halt, with it no looking likely that a deal can be done, according to Zero Hora.
Zero Hora (via Sport Witness) reported earlier this week that there had still been no formal contact between Everton and the Brazilian club, with Gremio director Klauss Camara confirming as much.
Now a new report from Zero Hora (via Sport Witness) claims that is appears ‘unlikely’ that Gremio will receive an offer that couldn’t refuse before Friday’s transfer deadline.
The report claims that Gremio had demanded €40million for Everton Soares last year when they only owned 50% of the forward’s playing rights, and now that they own 65%, it is expected that their price tag will have risen.
While the Toffees and Borussia Dortmund are both interested, it doesn’t appear realistic that either will be able to front the kind of funds that Gremio would require to let their star performer leave Porto Alegre.
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We’ve definitely written that fans should have taken this transfer saga with a pinch a salt at some point in the past few weeks, and it is easy to see why that is needed. Following Carlo Ancelotti’s claim that names in the media were incorrect last week, it isn’t clear whether the Blues are actually even interested, or whether it is the media machine churning out stories.
Sport Witness consider the theory that Everton may have actually been preparing a €30million offer, only to back down once they learned that it would not be enough to pry the 23-year old away from Gremio. That sounds like a realistic theory to me, as Everton’s finances don’t appear to be in the most stable place for them to make a ridiculous offer for an unproven forward right now (Telegraph).
Everton now have just three days, including today, to get some sort of meaningful transfer business done. Unless the club have been secretly working on negotiations beyond the prying eyes of the media, then it could be up to Ancelotti, Farhad Moshiri and Marcel Brands to work exceptionally hard to improve the squad until the end of the week.