A £70million fee for Iliman Ndiaye wouldn’t be “interesting enough” so Everton should keep hold of the winger reckons a Blues FA Cup hero.
With Ndiaye having turned down several new contract offers this year and then spoken of his desire to play Champions League football on the eve of the World Cup finals, his future has been subject to intense speculation this summer. However, Everton remain adamant that the man who scored their last goal at Goodison Park and first at Hill Dickinson Stadium is not for sale, they have not put a price tag on his head and the club’s stance has not changed since David Moyes made his strong declaration in April that: “He is the last person I would consider selling.”
Over the past week, Ndiaye’s father Mouhamadou Abdoulaye Ndiaye has insisted: “he’s not going anywhere,” after revealing that his son had called him. Then, after Everton shared photographs of the player returning to training with his club colleagues in Germany after his extending post-World Cup break after being in action for Senegal, his international team-mate Idrissa Gueye, who called time on his own Blues career this summer after seven years of service over two spells, replied: “Here to stay.”
Anders Limpar, the Ndiaye of his day (or is Ndiaye the 21st century Limpar?), was a boyhood Evertonian growing up in Sweden and got to live the dream, being part of the Blues’ 1995 FA Cup winning team with manager Joe Royle labelling him a football genius and the most talented player he ever worked with.
Asked if he’d keep hold of Ndiaye no matter what kind of bid came in, Limpar, speaking courtesy of SveaCasino, told the ECHO: “That’s a tricky question. It always comes down to money. Nobody in the whole world will pay £100 million for him so why should Everton sell him?
“If offers come in for £60-70 million, that’s not interesting enough for Everton. Why should they even bother?
“I mean, look at it from the other side, if Iliman Ndiaye can get Everton into Europe, they can make the same return that way, and they might even win an FA Cup or a League Cup on the way too.
“It would take much more money in that sense to sell him and replace him with a nobody for £40million, so in my opinion Everton should solve the problem by signing Jack Grealish first and I think that will solve the problem with Ndiaye.
“They are both Everton players, to me. Everton should not be selling their best players.”
One club who are interested in Ndiaye are Al Hilal in Saudi Arabia but his father poured cold water over that idea, adding: “He knows he can earn a lot of money there, but he also thinks his level could drop. He’s not the type to prioritise money over his career.”
Limpar, now 60, concurs and said: “I’m going to put it like this. How much money do you want?
“How much money does a person need in life? These guys are already multi-millionaires so why go to Saudi Arabia when you’re 26? You got to Saudi Arabia when you’re 36!
“Go to Saudi Arabia when you no longer feel close enough to the pace of the Premier League. It’s never good to talk about greed in football but come on, why would you ever go to Saudi Arabia when you can play in the Premier League?”