Sensational striker Gift Orban was widely tipped to make the big transfer this summer window, but in the end he didn’t.
Gent manager Michel Louwagie has said the club could afford to keep the most sought after Super Eagles invitee and his fellow striker Hugo Cuypers because of the money new owner Sam Baro brought in.
Without that financial cushion, Gent would have been under serious pressure to sell at least one of the strikers, he said.
“We let the sporting take precedence over the financial. And we can now do that thanks to the capital injection from Sam Baro,” Michel Louwagie told Het Nieuwsblad.
With the arrival of the new owner, Gent had sufficient reserves to keep a firm foot on the negotiating table.
“Would they have left without Baro? I don’t know if we would have sold both of them, but certainly one yes,” he further explained.
“Now KAA Gent are in a completely different situation. The arrival of Baro allowed us to view things more calmly than usual.”
The Belgian club reportedly put a 30 Million Euros price tag on Gift Orban, who was linked for several weeks with some of Europe’s elite clubs like Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League, Lille in Ligue 1 as well as Sevilla in La Liga.
