At the beginning of December we covered a claim from French magazine Le10 Sport that West Ham were interested in Anthony Martial. It was all quite far fetched, especially given that the premise was Jose Mourinho signing Dimitri Payet, and then West Ham asking for Martial as part of the deal.
Following the Le10 claims, Martial to West Ham became ‘a thing’. It was reported on widely, with all kinds of claims going off at various tangents.
Perhaps it was a coincidence that Le10 reported what they did, perhaps they’d had a genuine scoop, or perhaps once the idea of Martial to West Ham was out there people thought they may as well run with it.
Slaven Bilic himself rubbished it, but it’s now, for whatever reason, taken as almost rumour mill fact that West Ham want Martial.
Similar goes for reports of Barcelona and Real Madrid being in a ‘£60m battle’ to sign Martial from Manchester United. Those claims started with The Sun and then spread more widely, despite it not making sense on several levels.
Given all of that, France Football’s claims that Sevilla want Martial, and adding the Spanish club have come after West Ham and Barcelona, don’t stand up on their own.
Much more interesting is what RMC also claimed on Boxing Day, and it’s worth laying some background with RMC and Martial.
When many in England were yet to learn of Anthony Martial’s existence, it was RMC who broke news of his transfer to Manchester United, and since then there’s been enough to suggest an impressive closeness to Martial’s representation.
When Martial had his shirt number taken away from him and given to Zlatan Ibrahimovic, it was RMC and their journalist Mohamed Bouhafsi who stuck up for him.
In November, Martial’s agent Philippe Lamboley revealed just how much annoyance the shirt number swap had caused.
He said: “I’m not going to lie to you. Yes, it got to him. Yes, it surprised him. Yes, he was disappointed… for two days. But he’s professional. He knew how to get back into things straight away.
“Personally, I find that decision out of order and disrespectful to my player. I told Manchester United’s board that. You just don’t do it. So we accepted it, we turned the page, but we didn’t rip it up.”
Who had Lamboley been speaking to? RMC and Mohamed Bouhafsi, of course. The agent also made clear that Martial is happy at Manchester United, but there was an acknowledgement of a switch in the player’s status.
So when the following month claims appear from RMC that Sevilla want Martial on loan, it wouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes to have a good guess at the source, and yet the RMC article states it’s ‘a source inside’ Sevilla who has come up with the goods.
Rather than Martial’s representation, who have good connections to RMC, leaking the claims, we’re instead led to believe a source within a Spanish club has leaked it to a French media outlet.
Regardless, it was stated Manchester United aren’t interested in letting the player go, but RMC pointed out: ‘Martial does not seem to enter the plans of Jose Mourinho’
Over in Seville, Estadio Deportivo, so often first with Sevilla transfer news, had nothing to start with. Then they covered the RMC claims, without claiming any inside information of their own, which may be considered strange in itself.
Diario de Sevilla also cover RMC’s claims, but added it had been ‘confirmed to this newspaper by sources very close to the Nervión club.’
That article was published in the early hours of Tuesday during the Christmas period in Spain, and there’s no new claims or step ahead from the RMC article.
The truth of all of this is very much in the eye of the beholder. It would be understandable to jump to the conclusion of this being an agent pushing information of Sevilla interest, genuine or not, in his client.
Whilst there appears no attempt to rock the boat, previous comments and leaks would suggest it could be an attempt to at least wobble it a little. To put as much focus on Martial’s lack of Manchester United game time as possible.
If that’s the case then it certainly won’t be lost on Jose Mourinho.
