Napoli's eccentric president, Aurelio De Laurentiis,
has revealed how he managed to beat Arsenal to the
signing of Gonzalo Higuain in just 10 minutes.
The summer began with endless talk of Huguain
moving to Arsenal with newspapers claiming the deal
was just '24 hours away', a £25m fee was supposedly
agreed, personal talks were completed, a medical
was booked and he was even reported to be in
London at one point.
We heard it all and it seemed only a matter of 'when'
not 'if' the Argentinean would become a Gunner.
However, weeks went by with no conformation and it
was claimed we were struggling to agree a fee with
Real Madrid. The longer it went on, you just got the
feeling we would miss out.
Then, in late July, out of nowhere Napoli entered the
chase armed with the money generated from the sale
of Edinson Cavani to PSG and Higuain was soon off to
Naples to complete his move to Italy, as Arsenal
switched their focus to trying to sign Luis Suarez –
which ultimately ended in disaster.
Napoli's president has now revealed exactly how
quickly they managed to get the deal done, claiming
a €38m plus add ons fee was agreed with Madrid
within 10 minutes and the following day he met
Higuain and his agents and within 8 hours
everything had been signed.
'We were in the mountains with the team and I
asked my people, should we call Real Madrid? In
10 minutes it was done for €38m plus add-ons,'
'The day after we went to Venice for eight hours
closed in a room and did a deal [with Higuain]. It
was easy. 'I didn't know Arsenal wanted him, as
nobody told me. I'm sorry, Arsenal!' (source: the
Daily Mail)
Now THAT'S how to close out a deal. While Napoli
may not have known of Arsenal's interest, Arsene
Wenger admitted yesterday that Higuain was a
target this summer, telling Arsenal.com:
"We were working on two or three targets and he
[Higuain] was one of them," Wenger said. "It
didn't come off in the end, that doesn't take
anything away from his quality.
"Napoli took advantage of that at the right
moment, it's more about timing as well.
Reading between the lines, we were trying to sign
Higuain or Suarez, we decided to go all-out for Suarez
and it backfired. It's one of those things but I was
gutted when we failed to sign Higuain. I never really
though the Suarez deal was a goer, mainly because
Liverpool were adamant they weren't selling to us
and Stan Kronke admitted last week he got the
feeling they were never going to cave.
So it begs the question why did we let Higuain slip
through our fingers?! Madrid were willing sellers and
he wanted to come, so we should have just thrashed
out a deal quickly, as Napoli did, and got him on
board in July. Had we managed to sign him as well as
Ozil, I'd seriously fancy us for the title this season. I
just really hope we don't regret missing out on him
come the end of the season.
What did you think when we missed out on Higuain?
Will we regret it?
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld from Glo Mobile.
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