With the arrival of Radja Nainggolan, Antwerp has had its top transfer. Cagliari should be especially grateful for that. The Italian club was about to recruit him (again), but made themselves impossible with their ex-player in a special way.
The Bosuil stadium: there the 33-year-old from Antwerp will (probably) play his first match ever on the Belgian fields. Although Nainggolan would have preferred to return to ‘his’ Cagliari. In the past, he collected 188 appearances for that club.
In the end, the transfer never came and that still resonates with ‘Il Ninja’: “I had left a lot of money to choose Cagliari. Until the chairman and the sporting director just dropped me,” he told Italy’s Unione Sarda.
According to the new addition to Antwerp, the financial difficulties at his ex-club have prevented him from returning to Sardinia. These problems came in his eyes because the club focused too much on getting big names: “They betrayed me and I am very disappointed about that. I gave up a lot to be able to wear Cagliari’s shirt, but I noticed that they didn’t really want me. They just assumed I would come.”
