Arsenal & Tottenham failed with Marco Asensio bids in summer
By Tom Gott
Arsenal and Tottenham both failed with bids to sign Real Madrid midfielder Marco Asensio during the summer transfer window.
The 25-year-old has battled injuries in the past few seasons and has struggled to hold down a permanent spot in the Real Madrid lineup, and with two years remaining on his contract, there were plenty of rumours that he could be sold by Real.
According to Cadena SER, some of the strongest interest came from England, where Arsenal and Tottenham both reached out to try and get a deal done.
Spurs were keen to bring Asensio in on loan and brought the idea up while discussing the future of Gareth Bale, who returned to the Bernabeu after his loan with Spurs came to an end in the summer, and AC Milan did something similar in their talks over Brahim Diaz.
Arsenal, on the other hand, made it clear that they would pay £34m to bring the Spaniard in permanently, but they could not find an agreement with Real.
Those in charge at Real were open to letting Asensio leave, with the loan proposals of particular interest, but the 25-year-old's agent has revealed that it was manager Carlo Ancelotti who personally put a stop to the exit rumours.
"The possibility of a transfer had been studied," his agent Horacio Gaggioli confessed. "Teams from all over the world were interested, but Ancelotti told him to stay.
"More than one club contacted both Real and myself because they thought that Marco still needed to recover from injury and they wanted to give him the minutes needed to do that. The club was ready to let him go.
"But Carlo said: 'Hey, Marco, I trust you. I want you to play centrally, do you understand?'. Marco was excited by that."