TMW
Is Nuno Tavares the best signing in Serie A? We should ask ourselves this when five assists arrive in the first league games, as a left-back, upsetting all the performance rankings so far. Better than Theo Hernandez and Robin Gosens, his performances have aroused different interest for those who, a year ago, were at Nottingham Forest without surprising. Two seasons ago, however, at Olympique Marseille he started in high gear, only to decline during the season, without therefore achieving definitive redemption.
However, there are two teams that have been close to Nuno Tavares. The first is Atalanta. The deal was close to arriving, but it didn’t close due to a question of figures and formulas: Arsenal wanted the dry loan to enhance the player and then still have two years left on his contract, so they were willing to sell him on a dry loan. The Nerazzurri wanted a right of redemption, but the response put negotiations on ice: 35 million euros. Definitely an out of budget figure for anyone in Italy. That’s why he ended up at OM, with the Nerazzurri having focused on other profiles.
Then there was Inter, a year ago, before the arrival of Carlos Augusto. Here too the assessment made by the English was out of the norm, so the negotiations had stalled. The Biancocelesti managed to get it for 5 million plus 35% on future resale. This is because the Portuguese himself was one year away from his contract expiring and the risk of losing him to zero was not a small one.