Carlo Ancelotti and Marcel Brands are both fans of Everton’s reported Premier League target Santiago Arias but will he leave La Liga giants Atletico Madrid?
Carlo Ancelotti’s Everton could offer Santiago Arias an escape route out of Atletico Madrid this summer, according to Antena2, and you would imagine that the Italian coach would be given plenty of backing from director of football Marcel Brands.
After all, it seems that this swashbuckling right-back has plenty of fans at Goodison Park.
Ancelotti, the report claims, tried to sign Arias at Napoli and now wants the £10 million man to join him on Merseyside.
But there is another, rather important member of Everton’s staff who would love nothing more than to rubber stamp this deal. It was Brands, after all, who brought Arias to PSV Eindhoven seven years ago.
“He is the perfect model of the modern defender: pacy, powerful and attack-minded,” Brands told the PSV website about this buccaneering little dynamo.
“There are not many players with such qualities.”
A three-time Eredivisie champion at the Phillips Stadium, Arias has found first-team football far harder to come by since he moved to Spain in the summer of 2018.
With Kieran Trippier providing competition, the 28-year-old has made just six La Liga starts under Diego Simeone while playing a grand total of 180 minutes in the current Champions League campaign.
And if Arias feels the time is right for a fresh start, where better than at a club with Ancelotti and Brands pulling the strings?
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