The moment Felix went for 120M, 70M became the fair fixed price for the best player in the league. (Also just in case anyone is feeling a little excited, No I am not calling Felix shet, I was the first to even introduce Felix to this forum and have stated I can't help but like the SOB despite him being from Benfica. He still is no where near 120M though. But the market is fecked.)
That's the real issue here.
Sporting (and Sporting's supporters) would have been more than happy to sell Bruno Fernandes for the right price: 30-40M€. It would have been one of their biggest sales ever.
However, as soon as Benfica announced that Atletico had made an offer of 126M€ for João Félix (on June 26th), Sporting made it a point to not sell Bruno Fernandes for less than 70M€. It's like it was a matter of honour or something? So weird.
Unfortunately for Sporting, the real world does not work like that. This nonsense turned off pretty much every single buyer except for Tottenham.
The market immediately cooled down after EPL's trade deadline so I don't think anyone is going to make a better offer for Bruno Fernandes, let alone meeting the insane 70M€ price tag.
Well, scratch that... maybe a Jorge Mendes related team might pull the trigger (Valencia, Monaco, Atlético, Lazio or Napoli).
He's obviously not that good as no one is in for him at all. There's lots of agent talk and very little substance.
He's a big fish in a small pond. I don't see how anyone can watch his highlight reel and think he'd score a high % of those goals in England.
He has so much time and space to tee himself up and a lot of the goal keeping is poor.
I watched him play a lot in the last 2 years. He's a great player, really, one of the best players in the league.
You're right, he's a big fish in a small pond and de would not score that much in England.
You would be happy with 10 assists plus 10 to 15 goals (depending on penalties) a season from him?
That's what I think he would be able to do as a regular starter for a top EPL team.
The club (reportedly) pulled out of the negotiations because the price point did not match the player. I'm not sure what makes you think we could have gotten the deal done at £40m, not a single comment from journos, agents, general rumour mill or the sporting president himself has suggested that a £40m price tag was realisitic. They asked for almost double that.
That was a very realistic price tag if you had pulled the trigger in early to mid June.
By the end of June (26th) Sporting's president skyrocketed his price because of the João Félix sale.
That's really it.