We haven’t reached the summer window yet, and we’re pretty sure we’ve already got the winner for the award of “biggest transfer shambles of the year”.
Taking you back to January, you’ll remember when Everton appeared to have a transfer for Standard Liège’s Ishak Belfodil all wrapped up, only for it to collapse a few days later out of the blue.
Since then, every single party involved has spoken to Sport/Foot magazine about it, and each version of the story is completely different.
Here’s a brief recap:
• Mohamed Al Faiech, Ishak Belfodil’s actual agent, has everything sorted, but Christophe Henrotay, Belgium’s biggest agent, then catches wind of the deal and gets involved.
• The arrival of Henrotay on the scene causes Al Faiech to refuse to attend a meeting with Everton due to the Belgian agent’s presence, and the Toffees make a €10m + €2m bid for Belfodil, proof of which is shown by Henrotay himself to Sport/Foot in Belgium.
• A bit later, Ronald Koeman cancels the deal because he’s heard bad things about Belfodil’s personality.
• Still wanting to do a deal, a meeting is set up between the striker and the Everton manager, which is then cancelled by Standard’s chairman, Bruno Venanzi, because ‘imagine if he breaks a foot coming off the plane’.
• Towards the end of April, Bruno Venanzi tells Sport/Foot he never received an offer from Everton, and challenges anyone to prove they did.
And here we are, on the 10th of May, and the Belgian magazine have an interview with Daniel Van Buyten, who was, at the time of the transfer, an advisor to Standard Liège on all transfer matters, before leaving due to a lot of disagreements.
Here is his version of the Belfodil to Everton events.
He explained: “From the moment the player tells you ‘if there’s a good offer and I want to go, we sit down and discuss it’, you think it’s intelligent to force him to stay? You want to head into the play-offs with a player like that? In his head, he wasn’t at Standard anymore.
“And when I tell you they are a bunch of liars… Bruno Venanzi went on TV and said there wasn’t an official offer for Belfodil? He also promised at the start of the show to tell the truth. Look. (takes out his iPhone) It can’t be any clearer, it’s an email from Everton. They offered €10m (2 x €5m), and an easy €2m bonus. What’s more official than that?
“From the moment people allowed Belfodil to leave the training camp and negotiate with Everton, from the moment where they found a financial agreement with him, you can’t force him to stay at Standard. You’ve lost him. It’s dead. That’s when my disagreement with them started.
“You had to do the things in order: find an agreement between clubs, then let Belfodil go over there to negotiate his deal. I didn’t want to absolutely sell him, but when you can get €12m for a player who arrived on a free, and when you’ve promised him you won’t stand in his way, you have to follow through.”
Give it a couple of weeks, and we can guarantee you someone else (our bet is either Venanzi or Al-Faiech) will come out and stir this pot a little more.
As for Ishak Belfodil, the consensus is that he will leave in the summer, but it won’t be for as much as €12m. Not after four goals in his last 14 appearances.
