Currently without a club after being the sporting director of Racing Club in Argentina, Diego Milito had some time on his hands to have a chat with DAZN, where he talked about his career as a player and a failed transfer to Tottenham.
The striker will be most remembered for his time at Genoa and then Inter Milan, where he became a star for both club and country, but his story could have been very different.
The move to Tottenham appears to have been a possibility early on in his career, around 2008, as he explained, relayed by L’Interista, it was around the time he signed for Genoa for the second time.
Said to have taken place at the ‘last second’ of the transfer window, his move from Spain to Italy could have been one to England, as the now 42-year-old recalled.
He said: “That was an incredible scene, who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t gone to Genoa. Those weeks were very hard because I almost had a deal with an English team, Tottenham, who I like for Ardiles and Julio Ricardo Villa. Yet, I don’t know why, I wasn’t totally happy and satisfied.
“One day before the market closed, Preziosi called me and asked me: would you like to go back to Genoa? According to my wife, my face was transformed. I felt I had to return to Genoa to finish a path. I’ve always made choices with my heart, we did the whole negotiation quickly and I told the president of Zaragoza that I just wanted to return to the Grifone.”
Over the course of his entire time with Genoa, which took place over two spells, the Argentine scored 60 goals in 94 games.
Then came his move to Inter Milan, where his goalscoring record took a small dive, but not by much, as he found the back of the net 75 times in 171 appearances in all competitions for the Serie A giants, helping them win the Champions League in the process.
Tottenham will now be left to wonder what could have been at that time had they managed to convince him that little bit more.
