After all these years covering the Portuguese press, we’ve got pretty used to reading nonsense rumours and seeing newspapers jump the gun to report some interest from English clubs, often Manchester United.
But today we were surprised with a paragraph with shows both the local papers’ ability to create rumours as much as encouraging Portuguese clubs to buy players thinking of selling them in the future.
As reported by Record today, Benfica are apparently signing a Swedish 11-year-old who’s arriving from Hammarby. Isak Vural is well known at his club for showing some huge potential, and his transfer takes an entire page of the newspaper.
Record managed to speak to Love Gustafsson, from Hammarby’s communications department, and asked him a few questions about the kid. The official confirmed the move, and was nice enough to say Vural is a good player who he hopes is returning to the club one day.
Now comes the shocking part: just because Victor Lindelof is another player who was signed from Sweden and later sold to Manchester United last summer, Record really had the guts to ask a Hammarby official if Vural is going the same way in the future.
Gustafsson didn’t really want to get into the nonsense, and replied: “That would be good for us, but for now, it would be just speculation.”
Record mentioned the ‘many millions’ that Benfica made when selling Lindelof to Manchester United, especially because they had signed him from Vasteras at the age of 17.
A pile of gold is probably how they see the 11-year-old as well.
