Inter’s sporting director revealed that a top European team came close to taking Lautaro Martinez in 2018

Argentine striker Lautaro Martinez has become one of the leaders of the Inter squad with just five seasons played. In addition to having had a spectacular performance in the 2023/24 campaign, the native of Bahía Blanca currently wears the captain’s ribbon. When he was still a Racing player, Martinez had several offers and was on the verge of finalizing his arrival to another prominent team in European football, as revealed by the current sporting director of the “Neroazzurro”, Piero Ausilio, in a recent interview. In a chat with Radio TV Serie A, the manager provided details about the negotiations he had at the time to sign the Argentine striker: “The signing that I carry in my heart? Lautaro’s. In 2018 Lautaro Martínez was already a new Atlético de Madrid player. It was a 99% lost situation.” We took a plane to gamble our 1% at the risk of making a fool of ourselves, but it was a crazy four days. The only thing missing was the last agreement between the player and Atleti, there was a clause that the player didn’t want and we did a great job as a team,” confessed Ausilio.In turn, he explained that the help of Javier Zanetti and Diego Milito was key for the sale of the transfer to be finalized: “Zanetti gave me a hand, Milito was a director of Racing, But the president was very tough. I decided to fly to Argentina and we closed the deal.” On the other hand, Ausilio revealed that Martinez had an outstanding performance in a match with the Avellaneda team and that complicated the operation. “It was a disaster, because he scored three goals and forced a penalty that night. We had to sit back down and we paid more, but we managed to get him home,” she said. Finally, the striker joined Inter in mid-2018, who paid a total of 25 million euros to Racing to keep his transfer. Lautaro Martinez’s numbers at InterIn total, Martinez has made 251 appearances for the Italian side, scoring 114 and providing 38 assists so far. In addition, he won a Serie A, two Coppa Italia and two Italian Super Cups.

Original source in Spanish