Porto president Pinto da Costa has denied that the club have received any bids for Yacine Brahimi. In an interview with Jornal de Notícias, the club boss said the player is only leaving for the release clause, and nothing lower.
“If there’s someone to beat their release clause, and the players want to go, I can’t stop them. Regarding Brahimi, there weren’t bids. I’ve even read declarations from him saying he was happy here,” said Pinto da Costa.
Earlier this month, we covered claims from O Jogo which said the negotiations were in advanced stages as Chelsea were beating Liverpool, Wolfsburg and Milan in the race for the player.
However, Brahimi has a €60m release clause. It’s very unlikely that any club will pay that amount for him, but these quotes make pretty clear that things weren’t moving quickly as reported.
Portuguese clubs tend to make public when they reject low bids, which doesn’t seem to be the case here. O Jogo’s story seemed weird from the beginning, and Pinto da Costa has just confirmed that a deal is far from being done.
