AS Monaco FC vice-chairman Vadim Vasilyev has revealed the club were not interested in signing Carlos Tevez, Cristiano Ronaldo or Wayne Rooney this summer, Sky Sports understands.
The French moneybags spent all but £200 million in the summer transfer window, bringing in the likes of Anthony Martial, Eric Abidal, Geoffrey Kondogbia, James Rodriguez, Jeremy Toulalan, Joao Moutinho, Radamel Falcao and Ricardo Carvalho.
According to reports, former Manchester City boss Roberto Mancini was a summer target of Les Rouge et Blanc, but Vasilyev has moved to deny such rumours, insisting the club never considered replacing manager Claudio Ranieri.
“Claudio Ranieri? We are very happy with him. The group’s state of mind is just great. It works fine,” Vasilyev told L’Equipe.
“Did we have an interest in others coaches? No, the press said that but it was negative for the team, for Claudio and for us.
“In May, I told Ranieri he will remain our coach and I never had any contact with Mancini or any other. However coaches contacted us.
In addition, Vasilyev played down the club’s summer pursuit of Carlos Tevez, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney.
Tevez eventually left Manchester City for Juventus in a deal reportedly worth up to £12 million, while Ronaldo and Rooney have remained at Real Madrid and Manchester United, respectively, with the former having just put pen to paper on a new five-year deal at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu.
Vasilyev added: “It was the same for Rooney and Tevez, we never contacted them. There are a lot of people that spread the idea Monaco could be attracted, as it could help during their talks.
“Cristiano Ronaldo? I know him well, we met in springtime when I was ill, but we didn’t talk because Cristiano is a Real player. At that time he was in talks about his extension and we were working on Falcao. You can’t buy Falcao and Ronaldo, you have to be humble.
“I would like to have Cristiano, but we spent a lot of money and we will invest less in the future. We can’t go on at such pace and we want to use young players from our education centre, one of the best in France.”
Newly-promoted Monaco have started the new Ligue 1 season on cracking form, and are subsequently top-of-the-table with 13 points (4-1-0), two points clear of fellow big spenders Paris Saint-Germain.
As alluded to above, PSG also spent an outrageous amount of money this summer, but the French champions did so quite foolishly.
Les Parisiens paid €32 million for back-up centre-back Marquinhos and €64 million for Uruguay international striker Edinson Cavani, who is not the ideal man to play alongside Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Meanwhile, Ibra has just been handed a one-year, £12 million (after tax) contract extension at the Parc des Princes ahead of the club’s important Ligue 1 clash against Monaco on Sunday, as per the Daily Mail. Lucrative.
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