Right at the end of the January transfer window, it looked like Lille’s Boubakary Soumaré could be a late mover.
There has been plenty of interest in the midfielder from the Premier League for some time, and the likes of Wolverhampton Wanderers and Newcastle looked to make it a reality last month.
Both clubs made moves for the 20-year-old, with Newcastle in particular willing to pay as much as €45m to make a move happen.
Soumaré, though, wasn’t interested in the offers put in front of him, turning down the chance to join either Wolves or Newcastle and electing to stay in Ligue 1 for the time being.
While everyone else has gotten on with this and accepted Soumaré’s decision, Lille appear to have taken it rather badly.
They would have welcomed the money from selling Soumaré and, according to L’Equipe, it now seems he’s being punished for not accepting what was offered.
The newspaper explains that the midfielder has not featured for Lille since January 26th and was even left out of the squad for the recent defeat to Marseille.
This is all against manager Christophe Galtier’s wishes, with him having made it clear he would like to be using the midfielder.
However, those at the top of the club have decided against it, with Soumaré’s camp stating that the pressure being put on the player to leave is ‘unbearable’ at present.
Lille deny this, obviously, and have instead asked for clarity from the player and his representatives, who they say ‘speak in double talk’, after he rejected Wolves and Newcastle last month.
The situation is pretty ugly, with Soumaré even writing to the president, Gérard Lopez and holding talks to ‘set the record straight’.
There’s set to be a second set of such talks to allow for a ‘definitive easing of tensions’, although Soumaré is probably just wishing he’d gone to Wolves at this point.
