AC Milan director Paolo Maldini has revealed some interesting background regarding the summer pursuit of Charles De Ketelaere.
De Ketelaere ended up being the big signing of the summer for the Rossoneri as they invested a figure of over €30m to sign him from Club Brugge following what proved to be a long and arduous negotiation.
However, the speculation earlier in the window had been about Milan being close to the signing of two players from Lille, namely Sven Botman and Renato Sanches who ultimately joined Newcastle United and Paris Saint-Germain respectively.
Maldini was interviewed by La Gazzetta dello Sport and he spoke about the summer mercato and in particular De Ketelaere, with the director admitting that he was not actually the first choice target and instead plans changed.
“To tell the truth, we tried to sign Botman. In the event we signed him, we would have turned to a loan for the attack,” he said (via SempreMilan.it).
“The idea was not to sign average players, we have to get players with a great potential and Charles is one of them. We have to wait for him but we have very few doubts about him. He is strong from many points of view, he is 1.92m, he is strong in his legs, he is strong in his head, he has characteristics of the highest level.”
Again, there’s no mention of Sanches, it was a media invention. He’s not good enough.
again, many of the commenters here were also said Botman news was invented by the media. Until proven otherwise.