Leicester City’s €27m offer for Gabigol was confirmed by the player’s agent Wagner Ribeiro.
In a chat with UOL, the representative said this is the highest bid so far, surpassing Inter Milan’s €25m, Juventus’ €20m and Atletico Madrid’s €20m.
Ribeiro said he has already sent the offer to the Santos president Modesto Roma, who talking to UOL, denied having received it (as he always does).
There’s a clause in Gabigol’s contract which says that despite the €50m release clause, Santos need to accept all offers bigger than €18m.
Santos have only 40% of Gabigol’s rights and would get between €8m and €10m if they accepted these bids. However, Ribeiro said there’s an agreement with the Brazilian club so they can receive the entire €18m in case Gabigol is sold.
So these extra millions aren’t to convince Santos, but only to attract the player, and maybe agents, since he has the right to get all this money.
The agent also confirmed they have turned down a €35m bid from China, since the striker wants to play in Europe.
Globo Esporte claims that PSG are also interested, but haven’t made a bid yet. They say his desire is to go to England or Spain.
In case Santos accept one of these bids, they still need to make Barcelona aware of it. That’s because during Neymar’s transfer in 2013, the Catalan club chose three players to have a buying preference over, and Gabigol is one of them.
Despite taking care of all the negotiations, Ribeiro said he hasn’t talked to Gabigol about the offers yet: “I’ll wait for the games to end. I haven’t passed him anything, I’m filtering all this. The decision will be taken after the Rio de Janeiro games.”
