Landim reveals he turned down an international star at Flamengo in 2019 | OneFootball

Flamengo even negotiated with Mario Balotelli in 2019

Striker Mario Balotelli, a European Championship winner with Italy, was linked with Flamengo during the 2019 season. With that in mind, Rodolfo Landim, the club’s president at the time, revealed this Thursday (02) that he rejected the idea of signing the Italian.

— The idea did come up. Marcos Braz was getting ready to travel and told me he was going to look into the Balotelli deal. ‘Not Balotelli, Marcos. He’ll take all the youngsters to the nightclub. Are you crazy? No way‘ —, Rodolfo Landim began.

“He (Balotelli) is a tremendous player. Imagine leaving Balotelli here in Rio de Janeiro? If people are already complaining about Gonzalo Plata, just imagine Balotelli?” —, Rodolfo Landim concluded in an interview with ‘Charla Podcast’ this Thursday (02).

WHAT IS THE CONTEXT OF THE SITUATION?

Flamengo went into the market looking for a center forward for the remainder of the season. As a result, the name of striker Mario Balotelli, who was at Nice (FRA), came up. At the time, the player was in good form and sparked the fans’ curiosity.

In fact, Flamengo issued an official statement saying it was ending its attempt to sign the player: “Flamengo, player Mario Balotelli and his representatives have decided, by mutual agreement and after two days of cordial meetings in Monaco, to end on this date (8/15) the negotiations involving the possible signing of the player.”

Soon after, Mario Balotelli signed with Olympique de Marseille (FRA). Unable to establish himself, the Italian center forward later played for several clubs, such as Brescia (ITA), Monza (ITA), Adana Demirspor (TUR), Sion (SUI), Genoa (ITA) and Al Ittifaq (SAU).

WHAT WERE THE FIGURES IN THE OFFER AT THE TIME?

Flamengo’s offer was around 3 million euros net of taxes per season, in addition to a signing bonus for a contract running until the end of 2021. The amount was basically the same as what the Rubro-Negro club was paying Gabigol at the time.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.