Koulibaly was heavily linked with a move to Manchester City all through the window, but the 29-year-old stayed put at Napoli and will spend one more season in Italy at least.

 

The defender’s agent was believed to be negotiating between the two clubs and there were claims that Manchester City backed out of the talks as they felt Napoli kept asking for more and more money.

 

 

Berrada insisted that the club never spoke with Napoli and there was a lot of noise around the speculation but without much substance to it.

 

He did admit that Manchester City did consider signing Koulibaly but given all the facts surrounding a potential deal, the club never made a serious attempt to take him to the Etihad.

 

 

“The truth is we never were in negotiations with his club at all about him”, Berrada told The Athletic.

 

“It was very interesting to see the amount of noise that was coming out from certain media outlets and social media.

 

 

“I smiled because there were certain instances where people were reporting that the deal was agreed, done, about to happen, he was going to be announced in a few days, when we were never in touch at all with Napoli about him.

 

“He’s definitely a top, top player so some consideration was given to him, but really within some parameters that were very clear to us — and those parameters never came into play so he was never really considered in that sense.”

 

Manchester City did sign a centre-back in the form of Ruben Dias from Benfica towards the end of the transfer window.