As covered by us on Tuesday morning, former Wolverhampton Wanderers midfielder Ruben Neves is today on the front page of Portuguese newspaper O Jogo. He granted a very long interview where he explained several topics of his career.
It turns out that the outlet is still releasing some bits of that conversation on their website, and we now get to see that this move to Saudi Arabia isn’t the only one he was ready for.
Neves told O Jogo that he was ready to leave Wolves on other occasions. He claims he even packed his things to switch clubs, and ended up staying at Molineux.
“A large number of factors. People see the news, but they don’t know what’s behind it. I was very happy at Wolverhampton, but I’d had some mishaps in terms of transfers in previous years. Transfers that were taken for granted and didn’t happen. That influenced me and my family too. There were two years when we even moved some things out of the house, only to bring them back in. Opportunities come along and we can’t look back,” Neves told O Jogo.
“At the end of last season I had talks with other clubs, I was even quite far along with a big club, but unfortunately – or fortunately – things didn’t happen and Al Hilal came along. I didn’t want to risk waiting for certain clubs again.
“I looked at my career, my family, spoke to various people and it was easy to decide. It came at the right time and I knew it wouldn’t influence my trips to the national team. I’m playing for the biggest club in Asia and things have been going extremely well. I’m very happy, so is my family, and it was the best decision I could have made.”
Neves doesn’t say which clubs he was about to join, although in the same interview, he does mention he got close to Barcelona and Arsenal, not detailing when those negotiations happened.
The midfielder joined Wolves in a €17.9 move from Porto in 2017 and left Molineux for €55m, moving to Al-Hilal. In his time in England, he had 254 appearances, with 30 goals and 13 assists, and his only title was a Championship trophy.
