'Moshiri wanted': Everton dodged a bullet as Marcel Brands admits Mario Balotelli talks

Marcel Brands at Everton must have felt like a desperate parent trying to keep an unruly child from spending every penny of his pocket money at the pick’n’mix.

The Dutchman, given the role of technical director and tasked with playing a major role in the recruitment department, found himself battling against not only Everton’s managers but also their heavy-spending owner.

Marcel Brands admitted that Rafael Benitez snubbed Luis Diaz before the winger ended up at Liverpool.

Brands attempted to bring Denzel Dumfries to Goodison Park too, and that also went the same way; something that will not have many Toffees fans re-evaluating their relationship with the highly-unpopular Spaniard.

But, while Brands often did not get his way, at least he managed to save Everton from the ignominy of relying on Mario Balotelli for goals.

Marcel Brands blocked Mario Balotelli’s Everton move

Speaking to Algemeen Dagblad, Brands recalls when the late-Mino Raiola tried to tempt Farhad Moshiri into bringing the ever-divisive former Liverpool and Manchester City striker back to England’s north west.

And Moshiri, of course, was only too happy to take the bait.

“‘Why not bring Mario Balotelli, guys?’ said Mino,” Brands recalls, Raiola trying to find a new club for the then-Marseille striker after securing the transfer of Moise Kean to Everrton.

“[Balotelli and Kean] seemed to Raiola to be a great striker duo for the Premier League. Both fast, skilled, strong and also complementary. After a while, he had substantiated his story so beautifully that Moshiri also completely liked it.

“Moshiri wanted to pull out his wallet. But I was responsible for the technical policy, for the composition of the squad.

“The great thing was, if you told Mino the truth to his face, he could handle it very well in the end. But he was super smart. If you let go of the steering wheel for a moment, he would sail in the other direction.”

Given how the next five years would go for Balotelli, it feels difficult to imagine the Italian finding the net with any great regularity as a Toffees player.

What’s more, the febrile atmosphere of Goodison Park coupled with one of the most controversial figures in modern football; surely the footballing equivalent of dropping a packet of mints into a fizzed-up bottle of Pepsi.

Brands could have brought Mikel Arteta and Luis Diaz to Everton

With Everton blocking his attempts to bring in Luis Diaz and Denzel Dumfries – the former scoring a hat-trick this week as Liverpool hammered Bayer Leverkusen 24 hours before the latter’s Inter Milan defeated Arsenal – one can only imagine where The Toffees would be right now had Brands been given the freedom to pull the strings.

“I moved heaven and earth to bring [Mikel] Arteta to Everton,” Brands would reveal to De Beslissers van FC Afkicken podcast a few months ago. “I spent the entire evening at his house. And I saw him as the ideal man for us. I immediately saw a top coach.

“I only heard positive things (about Arteta). Also within the club, at Everton. Then I was at his house to sound him out and I got so excited. (Arteta was) so well prepared and that passion came out everywhere; his mouth, his nose and his ears.

“I thought; ‘this is the coach, but for the long term’.”