It’s quite interesting to take a look at how Manchester City’s chase for the Shakhtar Donetsk midfielder Fred developed.
Back in January, reports claimed Pep Guardiola’s side made a bid to bring the player to the Premier League. But the offer was rejected by the Ukrainian club, who were playing the Champions League and wanted to hold him until the end of the season.
The rumour continued, and got quite interesting when the manager of the Brazilian National Team, Tite, revealed that Guardiola asked about Fred in a chat with him.
The national team manager didn’t give any more details of the talk, but pretty much confirmed that the Catalan boss had some interest in the midfielder.
Maybe the answer comes from the very same UOL. Because they have a story on the Brazilian players who are missing the World Cup, and bring more details about that chat between Guardiola and Tite.
The website has paragraph talking about the Grêmio midfielder Arthur, who’s out of the squad. And it turns out that he was recomended to Guardiola instead of Fred.
“In a conversation with the Manchester City manager, which also involved Douglas Costa (who Pep trained at Bayern) and other topics, Tite was asked about Fred, target of the English club. The answer was that he was a top-level player, but between one and another argument the manager said he considered Arthur even better. Fate made that Barcelona bought the Gremista, and that Tite, after valuing training of Fred for the national team in March, opted for him for the World Cup.”
So Tite, who considered Arthur better than Fred at the time, ended up going with the second, probably because of a positional matter. But could his advice to Guardiola have made the Manchester City boss give up on the player?
