James Rodríguez: the reason why Lucho Diaz signed for Liverpool and not Everton

Luis Diaz was about to play for Everton, the backyard rival of his current team, but, fortunately, James Rodriguez hindered the negotiation. It is not a secret to anyone that arriving on Anfield Road is not the same as arriving at Goodison Park.

On March 17, the specialized media The Athetic reported that the guajiro, today the sensation not only in Liverpool but throughout England, was close to signing for Everton before the team under the technical direction of Jürgen Klopp made a formal offer. However, the '10′ of the Colombia team, was crossed in the negotiations.

The question was like this: in the summer transfer market, Everton sought to hire Lucho, but one of Porto's conditions for letting him out was to have James in its ranks as a bargaining chip. This was agreed, only that the 30-year-old Cucuteño rejected the option of returning to the Portuguese club, where he made his way into the old continent.

As is well known, James preferred to arrive at Al-Rayyan, from the Qatar Star league, in a country where the level of football is not the best, but the remuneration for his game is. Contrary to what Radamel Falcao García did, for example, the creative flyer chose money instead of staying in a competitive league.

The media in question also stated that Rafa Benítez, until recently Everton's coach — he was replaced by Frank Lampard as a result of the results — was willing to sell Brazilian Richarlison, one of the team's benchmarks, to complete the item Porto asked for Lucho.

Thanks to James' disinterest in returning to Porto, the Portuguese club sold to the far left of Barrancas just six months later, to Liverpool, which disbursed 45 million euros for him. And, for a month and a half, Diaz has been proving that Los Reds is worth the investment for him: in ten matches he has two goals, one assist and, on a qualitative level, he does not spare a drop of sweat every time he is on the playing field.

Two weeks ago, the former Real Madrid and Bayern Munich footballer assured in a Twitch broadcast that Everton is a club he would have liked to spend longer, but, he assured, he left because Rafa Benitez did not count on him.

James played the 2020/21 season at Everton, with which he scored six times and served nine assists, but when Benitez replaced Carlo Ancelotti he was relegated and ended up leaving the team to Qatar, where he doesn't seem to be comfortable. “I would like to go somewhere else now. Go back to Europe, why not. I have the conditions, I'm picking up pace, waiting for what happens. Another good option is to go to the United States. I really like it, but there's no time for that,” he said.

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