On Wednesday, we covered a story from A Bola which showed Manchester City denying their interest in the Sporting midfielder Bruno Fernandes.
The Premier League champions were quoted as saying they were never in for the 24-year-old, dismissing all the recent rumours about the chase.
Now it turns out that the Portuguese media isn’t really buying it. They know Manchester City have backed off, but continue to say that they did try to sign Fernades.
Correio da Manhã is one of these outlets. They say that after having their €55m bid turned down, City are refusing to ‘go crazy’ to get the player.
Newspaper Record goes totally against what Manchester City have been telling the media. They say that through sources from their communications department, the club have been trying to ‘distance’ themselves from the player since last Sunday.
They’d already done the same with the English media in May.
However, Record insists that the interest existed, just like the negotiations. Pep Guardiola’s side wouldn’t get close to the €70m that Sporting are demanding for Fernandes.
Back to Correio da Manhã, they add that Manchester City want to sign João Félix from Benfica, and only then will think about Fernandes. It’s claimed that Guardiola still wants a player of his type, but to get the Sporting midfielder, the club would need to sell some players so they won’t have problems with Financial Fair Play.
