Jesus Navas returning to Sevilla when his Manchester City contract ended made sense. He’s from the area, a hero, they’d be getting him for free, Sevilla are at a high enough level to be very attractive… everything fit into place.
However, over the past few months it’s been increasingly clear that things wouldn’t be so simple. In March it was reported in Spain that Navas had been waiting ‘for 100 days’ for a Sevilla offer.
With the player’s Manchester City contract ending in June, any club could have made the player an offer from the January window onwards, but none arrived from Sevilla. Marca explained that Navas had even enrolled his children in Seville schools for the next academic year, yet still hadn’t heard anything.
At the time it was suggested the delay was because of Monchi leaving, but instead it seemed to be a long term plan to grind Navas down on wages. Get things to the point that Navas more or less had to sign for Sevilla, and then pay him much less than he’d have originally been expecting.
AS say Navas isn’t having that.
He feels Sevilla owe him one and expects them to make a financial effort. That’s almost certainly not going to mean matching his Manchester City wages, but he wants the club to show their thanks for the transfer in the first place.
AS claim that when Navas moved to Manchester City that destination was chosen because they were offering the most to Sevilla. Other offers were more tempting for Navas, but he helped Sevilla get more money.
With that in mind, he wants the favour returned.
As it stands, Sevilla sources believe Navas’ salary request is ‘very high’, whereas sources close to the player believe the club’s first offer is ‘insultingly low’.
Usually one would side with the club on this, and expect the player just to accept the offer. But, he’s 31 years of age, spent his entire career with Sevilla, apart from the one contract with Manchester City, believes he chose that destination to help Sevilla financially, and now the club are ignoring that.
With Sevilla’s behaviour and bargaining stances when negotiating transfers, and their insincere attitude towards loans, it’s easy to believe Navas has a point.
