 |  | | |
| |||
Garry Cook has reaffirmed the Club’s stance over last night’s decision
to walk away from any deal involving AC Milan midfielder Kaka.
Speaking
this morning at the City of Manchester Stadium, Cook told us: “It’s a
mixture of disappointment and some frustration too.
“I think
the intention from AC Milan was clearly to sell their player and
Manchester City’s intention was clearly to bring him to the football
club.
“I think there was some political pressure and definitely
media space that they engaged in. To be honest, I think they bottled
it, simple as that.”
“They live in a different space than we do as a football club and it’s been interesting to watch their behaviour.”
Despite
numerous media reports in Italy and throughout the country, Garry
continued to set the record straight: “We never met the player, we only
met the representatives, we never actually made him an offer on
personal terms.
“So it’s very difficult to turn down something that you’ve not been offered.
“We’ve
heard everything and there’s been a bit of mudslinging, but we’re going
to choose not to get into that, our objective is that we’re building a
football club for the long term.
“It would have been great to
have had Kaka at this football club, the Premier League would have
benefitted, football would have benefitted and we were willing to make
that investment on rational terms. Unfortunately, the behaviour that
they showed was not what we had expected nor had we anticipated.”
Cook
also cleared up reports surrounding the visit to Milan. He confirmed:
“We’ve been to Milan four times and the delegation yesterday involved
three lawyers that represent the legal counsel for Manchester City
football club.
“It also involved a board member who had flown half way around the world from Abu Dhabi, myself and one other senior executive.
“We
were confined to a room, with no food or drink, and we asked some
questions of the football club and more importantly we asked some
questions of the representatives of the player and they simple could
not answer the questions.
“What they wanted to talk about was;
‘how much are you going to pay him?’We chose not to get into that and
we didn’t make an offer to the player.
“Is he a great
footballer? Yes. Does he represent all the values you would want to
have as an ambassador of the sport global and were we looking for the
opportunity to joint venture in areas that would take this club on to a
different platform? Yes, but unfortunately the landscape changed and
his representatives wanted to talk about how much we were going to pay
him.
“Money was certainly the motive yesterday.”
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น