Slavisa Jokanovic has stated that former Leeds United academy product Ronaldo Vieira won’t be joining Sheffield United this season, as he told the club’s official YouTube account.
It was previously suggested that Vieira could be donning the colours of the Blades, but Jokanovic shared that a deal for the midfielder is now ‘definitely off’.
Leeds sold Vieira during the summer of 2018 when he swapped Yorkshire for Sampdoria in a £6.2 million deal (Guardian).
The energetic midfielder is still showcasing his talents in Italy, but as Jokanovic confirmed, a return to familiar grounds in England is now out of the picture.
“It’s definitely off,” said Jokanović. “We expected he could be available earlier for us.
“But we needed to wait for him longer period out of the situations to help us on the field and now we must move forward and look for other options.”
Both Kalvin Phillips and Vieira came through the ranks at Elland Road and they were seen as highly-rated prospects.
It’s there for all to see in regards to where Phillips has taken his game, but Vieira would have probably felt that he would be playing at a higher level by now.
It wasn’t an easy call for the club to part ways with him when they did because he was a popular figure.
Marcelo Bielsa himself disapproved at his sale, which Andrea Radrizzani agreed with, but as quoted by Leeds Live, the club needed to sell ‘one or two players’ in order to ‘sustain’ itself. And that played included Vieira.
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