Buying Jordan Pickford from Sunderland in the summer of 2017, Everton made it very clear who their goalkeeper of the future was going to be, meaning anyone else coming in would have a hard time getting on the pitch.
His season and subsequent World Cup campaign with England only confirmed this, and only an exit for a huge amount of money this summer would have seen the 24-year-old exit Goodison Park.
However, according to France Football, Everton were already thinking about a time without him, and a man high on their list would have been Alban Lafont, who swapped Toulouse to Fiorentina this summer.
The interest was there via new director of football Marcel Brands, who followed the Frenchman at PSV Eindhoven, and even made an approach, contacting his agent.
However, the fact the interest wasn’t all that concrete, meaning he wasn’t a priority for the Toffees, led the goalkeeper and his entourage to look elsewhere, even if it did make the 19-year-old sit down and think, as it would have allowed him to get his foot in in the Premier League.
Now a regular starter at Fiorentina, and with a lot of time ahead of him, he’ll most likely get another chance to get his move to England.
That time, however, it’ll probably be for a lot more than the €7m the Serie A side paid for him this year.
