During the summer, we saw lots of rumours linking Newcastle United to the Porto striker Vincent Aboubakar. Reports from Portugal claimed the Magpies’ interest many times, and even ‘advanced talks’ were mentioned at the time.
The Cameroon international was returning from a loan at Besiktas at that stage, and as his relationship with Porto hadn’t been any good, a permanent departure sounded very likely, and it was said that £10m could be enough to take him.
But Aboubakar ended up making up with his club and staying. And it was a pretty good decision for both parts, as the player currently has eight goals in eight matches this season.
But were Newcastle really in for him this summer? Aboubakar spoke to the press after Porto’s 3-0 win over Monaco for the Champions League last night, and was not afraid of making his transfer situation very clear.
Thing is, he never mentioned the Premier League club as a summer possibility, and only revealed talks with Olympique Marseille instead.
“I had already done a lot of the preparation here. I spoke to the Marseille manager, explained that and he was understanding because he knows how things go in football. In addition, FC Porto wanted to stay with me”, Aboubakar said.
“I think that on the sporting plan, it was best for me to stay at FC Porto. I don’t know what the future holds and I prefer to focus on the present”.
As his current contract is about to expire at the end of the season, he was also asked to talk about it: “I am a footballer, I only play football and I have people who deal with it. I’ll have to tell you that I don’t know what the future holds for me”.
It’s now hard to believe that Newcastle were that close to Aboubakar, and even if they were, it was nothing compared to Olympique Marseille’s strong attempt to land him, otherwise the player would have mentioned it.
But with his contract coming to an end and the striker refusing to say he’s signing a new deal, maybe a new good opportunity will show up next summer.
