AS Monaco CEO Thiago Scuro has said his side are not the ‘bad guys’ after the late collapse of Lamine Camara’s move to Chelsea.
Monaco pulled the plug on the transfer late in the window, leaving Chelsea ‘furious’ as the Premier League side failed to sign a replacement for Enzo Fernandez.
Monaco had wanted to keep Camara, but required a big sale late in the window. The Ligue 1 side had opened the door for Camara to move to Chelsea for around £47m, though decided against the deal when it appeared Folarin Balogun was set to sign for Everton for £38.5m. Balogun later performed a U-turn on the move in a messy situation, blaming Everton for their treatment over medical concerns.
The fiasco saw all three clubs frustrated. Monaco failed to recoup funds from a sale, Chelsea missed out on a Fernandez replacement, and Everton left themselves short at centre-forward. Speaking at a press conference, Scuro said Monaco were not the bad guys.
“We started negotiations with Chelsea. I informed the player directly myself. I called him. I informed his agent, as we always do. Very open. We had discussions about the conditions for Lamine to go to Chelsea. At the same time, the medical discussion was ongoing with Balogun. A
“nd what happened was that around 10 p.m, in our time here, maybe a bit earlier, Everton realised that, OK, there is no problem. We are ready to do it. Let’s sign the contract. As soon as we got the information, we came back to Chelsea and thought, OK, we have our deal there. There is no deal on it. Because it’s also fair to do this. It’s also part of the game.
“There is no reason that these kinds of discussions are dynamic on the last day of the transfer window, which all of us decided to be on the last day, trying to find solutions, with the clock ticking, that now this kind of interaction [sees us] become the bad guys in the room.
“That Monaco is ‘not fair, Monaco is not right. Everybody is very fair and nice in the football industry. Just Monaco is not.’ Too much.
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