Before he went to Napoli to replace Kalidou Koulibaly, Kim Min-jae was wanted by Tottenham Hotspur.
There’s plenty of reports to back this up, and Spurs’ decision to not go after him, whatever it was, is one they can now rue, as the South Korea international is the talk of the town in Naples.
Alongside Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, the defender is one of the two star signings the club made during the summer, while Tottenham had to make do with Clément Lenglet on loan from Barcelona.
That’s not to say the Frenchman isn’t a good player, he is, but he hasn’t quite been as solid as Kim, who has been a key part of Napoli’s great form in Italy and in Europe.
Il Mattino look back at how the player escaped the grasps of Lazio and Tottenham, who were the two clubs who also wanted, and how he ended up where he is, working under Luciano Spalletti.
Spurs wanted him when he was still in China, playing for BJ Guoan, but he eventually signed for Fenerbahce, which was the step he needed to then move elsewhere.
The newspaper explain the player ‘excited the Tottenham scouts, but there was always someone who kept shaking their head’, suggesting not everyone at the club was convinced.
This ‘prevented him from making the big leap in one of the main European leagues’, like the Premier League, which led him to Turkey as a stop gap.
The rest, as they say, is history.
