Varandas: Jota Silva was Rui Borges’ pick, what Sporting lacked | OneFootball

Frederico Varandas admitted that Jota Silva was requested by Rui Borges and clarified Sporting's position during the negotiations.

Sporting missed the signing of Jota Silva by one minute. As revealed by our newspaper in an Exclusive Leonino, Frederico Varandas blames Evangelos Marinakis for the situation but applauds the legal department of the green and whites, explaining that the forward was a desire of Rui Borges.

"He was a player identified by our coach with the aim of bringing more depth to the squad, and this request was valued by Sporting's structure. We decided that bringing Jota was one of the objectives and this obviously required a certain financial effort. Jota was practically non-negotiable throughout the market as about 15 million euros were being asked, to which we, the administration and coach, said no", he confirmed to the press.

The English made the negotiations difficult, something that was explained by Varandas: "Nottingham received an offer from Botafogo of 19M. We informed our coach who was always aware of the process and there was nothing to be done. Then it happened that Jota refused that offer and close to midnight, around 11:20, 11:00 on the last day, he finally accepted a loan more or less on our terms, but not within our values. Sporting conceded, we're talking about a matter of 3 or 4 minutes that there wasn't time, and we accepted a loan offer of 4.5M, plus the salary of 2.5M, which would be 7 million euros for the player's loan".

"It is technically impossible to receive the documentation, fill out the forms, sign the contracts, scan, and upload to the platform in 15 minutes. It was technically impossible. In fact, when we received the final documentation at 11:45, the experienced people from our legal department said ‘President, this is not going to be possible’ and I said okay, let's try. It happened that after these soap operas everything was done in 16 minutes, something I never thought", said Varandas, praising the green and white structure.

To conclude, Varandas took a jab at the rivals and once again applauded the action of Sporting: "I have to leave here a thank you to the legal department because I never thought, just like many people who have worked in clubs, sports directors, documenters, that it would be possible to receive the documentation at 11:45, validate the contracts, sign them, and scan them. It was technically impossible. We tried but we couldn't get Jota. We have been here since 2018 and we have never managed to be champions of the market. We never managed! Neither in the number of investments, nor in the number of players, nor in the number of private jets, nor in the number of airports nor secret signings. We never managed!".

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