You’d do well to find a club with deeper pockets than Manchester City but even they balked at the price tag that was slapped on Virgil van Dijk in January.
Liverpool made Van Dijk the most expensive defender in history by splashing out £75 million to shore up their back four at the midway point of last season.
The Dutch centre-half has proven to be an instant hit at Anfield and since Van Dijk made his Reds debut, no player has kept more clean sheets in the Premier League than him.
City were in the market for a reliable central defender at the turn of the year and Van Dijk was reportedly one of their top targets. And while Pep Guardiola insisted that there was no truth to the rumours linking them with the then-Southampton defender, a new documentary suggests otherwise.
The new Amazon Prime documentary All or Nothing shows City chairman Khaldoon Al-Mubarak discussing the possibility of signing Van Dijk with the club’s director of football Txiki Begiristain and chief executive Ferran Soriano.
“Txiki, a central defender, come on what are we doing?” Al-Mubarak asks.
Soriano responds by saying: “I told him about the price tag.”
It’s at that point that the show’s narrator, Ben Kingsley, adds that “City have inquired about Southampton central defender Virgil van Dijk but the price tag is proving an issue.”
Al-Mubarak quickly pours cold water on the potential deal by repeating “You can’t be serious!” in full John McEnroe mode.
City ended up bringing Aymeric Laporte to the Etihad for a reported fee of £57 million but the French-born defender ended up making just nine Premier League appearances for Guardiola’s side in the second half of their title-winning campaign.
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