Lance Davids, the agent of Oswin Appollis, has revealed that Polokwane City owner Johnny Mogaladi went ‘missing in action’ several times as clubs were trying to conclude a deal for the Bafana Bafana winger.
Appollis, 23, was one of the hot properties during the recent transfer window but ended up staying at Rise and Shine, despite some serious interest in his services.
Davids gave a lowdown of the different offers from ES Tunis, MC Alger and Mamelodi Sundowns his agency Footballfirst were trying to facilitate with Polokwane City, but Mogaladi was just not keen on selling and played hide and seek during the window.
“I knew it was gonna go to the wire with Oswin, just because of his situation, he was in high demand from North Africa,” Davids said on MetroFM.
“And the problem was, I think if we’re all honest, the truth it was, they came in with the offer and the club owner accepted the offer, and he just went offline.
“It was really difficult, because also dealing with North Africans is also difficult, because they work late at night and we worked like normal hours.
“So it was also, it wasn’t easy, and we thought we’d gone through and then unfortunately the team Esperance found a replacement. Then, of course, it was dragging on, dragging on and then, of course, the window went close and then it was MC Alger that came in afterwards also.
“And then we just also couldn’t find the owner of Polokwane, struggling to get ahold of him. We thought it would be the same price tag. We just couldn’t get hold of him, unfortunately.
“Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. In the last I would say, 72 hours [of the window], Sundowns came in. They had a chat with Johnny, and then he just went offline again.”
Davids also confirmed that Chiefs’ management tried hard to make the deal happen but they couldn’t meet Polokwane’s demands of an upfront payment.
“To be honest, Kaizer Chiefs was really, really interested in him from the beginning, from the word go, we were trying to push, push, push,” he added.
“And I was just thinking again like Johnny also always wanted or the club wanted one installment, wanted all the money up front. And I just don’t think Chiefs had that capacity to go and but I think there was a deal to make it.
“I think [Kaizer] Junior was pushing, even BobSteak was also pushing hard to make this thing happen. But unfortunately, it didn’t happen.”
