Liverpool Echo<\/a>” network reported that the English giants were ready to pay Leipzig 86 million pounds for Diomande.<\/p>\nLeipzig valued the player at more than 100 million pounds, though, and Liverpool withdrew once it emerged that Diomande fancied a move to European champions Paris Saint-Germain.<\/p>\n
PSG also baulked at the sum Leipzig were demanding. That left the door open for Real Madrid, who swooped for the young forward earlier this month in a deal worth a maximum of 120 million pounds.<\/p>\n
Rumour now has it that Diomande had been dreaming of the Santiago Bernabeu all along.<\/p>\n
Michael Yormark, co-founder of the Roc Nation agency that represents Diomande, said: “Nathan Campbell, Diomande’s agent, sat down with the Ivorian player, and they talked about his dreams and ambitions.”<\/p>\n
According to Yormark, Diomande affirmed: “I want to be the best player in the world, I want to win the Ballon d’Or, and I want to win titles, and my biggest dream has always been to play for Real Madrid.”<\/p>\n
Yormark explained: “We had to put in place the right plan to achieve his dream. We built a team around this young player. This deal represents a big moment for all of us too. We took an ambitious young man and turned his ambition into reality.”<\/p>\n
Campbell, head of global talent recruitment in football at Roc Nation, told the SportsBoom.co.za website: “This historic deal with Real Madrid is a testament to the incredible work ethic that Yan possesses.”<\/p>\n
He stressed: “We could not be prouder to have contributed to the completion of the biggest transfer deal for an African player in the history of football.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yan Diomande, the recent signing for Real Madrid, has hinted that his dream was never to move to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[85,1818,82,2986,83,24477],"class_list":["post-70544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-madrid","tag-laliga","tag-liverpool","tag-madrid","tag-rb-leipzig","tag-real-madrid","tag-y-diomande"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}