According to reports in Portugal (h/t Liverpool Echo), Everton Soares is closing in on a move to Benfica, meaning Everton will have to turn their attentions elsewhere this summer. The 24-year-old had been linked with us, West Ham United, Leicester City, West Bromwich Albion and Napoli among others, but he’s opted to join a European outfit that will be in the Champions League next season.
How close did we come to signing Everton?
Not very. Although Gremio president Romildo Bolzan and Benfica manager Jorge Jesus admitted that Everton were after the Brazilian international, it’s unknown whether a bid was actually lodged. Carlo Ancelotti reportedly contacted Everton to convince him to come to Goodison Park, but Benfica’s approach ended up being successful.
Ancelotti’s reputation and our squad being full of South America players (Yerry Mina, Bernard, Richarlison) should have been enough to lure Everton, but instead he confirmed his departure from Gremio on Instagram ahead of the move to Portugal. And now the saga is over, we need to identify alternatives to Everton to strengthen our attack.
Who could we sign instead?
We’ve been linked with Leon Bailey, Cengiz Under, Wilfried Zaha, Memphis Depay, Jose Callejon, Rafa Silva, Jack Grealish, Philippe Coutinho and Jesse Lingard, but it remains to be seen who we’ll end up signing.
Ancelotti isn’t short of options with Bernard, Richarlison, Alex Iwobi and Theo Walcott at his disposal, but Richarlison has scored more than twice as many goals (13) as Bernard (3), Iwobi (1) and Walcott (2), so we aren’t getting consistency from the majority of our forwards.
Everton would have been an upgrade on Bernard, Iwobi and Walcott, having scored 15 goals and made seven assists in 42 games last year, but he’s the one that has got away.
Summary
Everton’s record in Brazil is very impressive and he surely would have settled in well with our South American players, but we didn’t put in a proposal worth accepting. Whether that’s down to us not matching his asking price or not handing him a lucrative contract remains to be seen, but our loss is now Benfica’s gain.
In other news, Carlo Ancelotti is considering selling Everton’s £30m-signing