Manager Erol Bulut has revealed he wanted to sign winger Ernest Muci for Cardiff City, but they couldn’t afford his €4m asking price.
Akit cover comments from the former Cardiff boss today in which he admits he was surprised to later see Muci join Besiktas in a €10m deal.
Bulut was sacked by Cardiff earlier this year after 58 matches in charge after taking the reigns in July 2023.
It was his first job outside of Turkish football, where he had previously been assistant manager at Basaksehir and then managed Yeni Malatyaspor, Alanyaspor, Fenerbahce and Gaziantep.
His first year at the club saw him tapping into a market he knew well, bringing in the likes of Manolis Siopis and Dimitrios Goutas from Trabzonspor and Sivasspor respectively on free transfers.
There were also additions in the January transfer window, with David Turnbull joining in a €2.33m deal from Celtic and Ethan Horvath and Ryotaro Tsunoda also arriving from Nottingham Forest and Yokohama alongside several loan deals.
One man it seems they missed out on was Muci, who Bulut says was simply out of Cardiff’s price range at the time, and then was later sold for over double what they had been quoted anyway.
“Ernest Muçi was a transfer I was considering for Cardiff,” he told BeIN Sports.
“When we asked, they said it could be a transfer fee of €4m. Because of that we wouldn’t have a chance to get him.
“I was surprised at the time, while they said it would be €4m for us, it came to Beşiktaş for €10m. This happened during the mid-season break last year.
“Since we had a transfer ban, they couldn’t open it anyway. We didn’t have a chance to make the transfer anyway.”
