A representative of Arsenal striker Viktor Gy\u00f6keres has claimed Sporting CP reached an agreement to sell the Sweden international to Manchester United earlier this summer, but the player refused to be forced into the transfer.<\/p>\n
There had been reports of a late hijack attempt from United, with former Sporting boss Ruben Amorim linked to a possible reunion. According to the agent team, Sporting and United agreed a fee that exceeded Arsenal\u2019s payment, yet the transfer did not proceed because of the player\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Chalkias, an assistant to key agent Hasan \u00c7etinkaya, spoke to Studio Allsvenskan and outlined the offers and the negotiations. \u201cThere were crazy amounts offered from Saudi Arabia,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re supposed to act in his best interest. Of course [agents take a percentage]. It\u2019s a lot of money. Maybe Viktor should respond to that some day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think we pressured him once to accept the offer. At the end of the day, money comes and goes and this move to Arsenal brings us a lot of marketing.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Sporting] had concluded a deal with Manchester United behind our backs, that was a problem. United offered a higher transfer fee.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chalkias criticised Sporting\u2019s handling of the situation and singled out decisions he felt undermined the process. \u201cIf [former sporting director Hugo] Viana were still at Sporting, the deal would have been done within an hour,\u201d Chalkias continued.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cEverything was written but we didn\u2019t have time to start a legal battle. I don\u2019t understand how a player who scored so many goals and won three trophies didn\u2019t deserve more respect.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe industry is about trusting people. The sacrifices we made were probably the turning point in getting the deal done. They offered him to Real Madrid , made headlines with Madrid and even United, but from day one there was a commitment to Arsenal.\u201d<\/p>\n
The agent\u2019s account frames the transfer as a contested process in which offers from multiple parties were considered but the player elected to join Arsenal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Agent claims Sporting agreed a higher fee with Manchester United, but Gy\u00f6keres refused the transfer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3683,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1083],"tags":[983,1032,938],"class_list":["post-3684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-man-utd","tag-agents","tag-contract-disputes","tag-deadline-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}