Nelson Semedo is already a new Wolverhampton player. The Portuguese side was made official by the Premier team, who will pay 30 million plus 10 in variables to Barcelona to be done for his services. In this way, Semedo becomes the tenth Portuguese of the Wolves squad, in addition to coach Nuno Espíritu Santo.
This amount will be used to a large extent – around 20 million plus 5 in variables – in the signing of the young Ajax winger, Sergiño Dest, who is the man chosen by the current coach, Ronald Koeman, and the club's technical secretary to replace Semedo's departure.
The truth is that Barcelona was waiting with crossed fingers to close Semedo's operation in order to have the necessary liquidity to face the next operations. And is that apart from the signing of Dest, other names like center back Eric Garcia and forward Memphis Depay are a priority in the Koeman project.
In any case, his transfer is at least paradoxical, since the president Josep Maria Bartomeu included him during an interview, in the official channels of the club, in a list of non-transferable players. A month after these statements, Semedo has been transferred to English Wolverhampton.
Despite being a starter for much of his career at Barça, Semedo never finished convincing for his defensive shortcomings. In fact, he was one of the most notable players in Barça's embarrassing win against Bayern in the quarterfinals of the last Champions League.
For its part, Wolverhamtpon continues its commitment to Portuguese players as a result of the participation that the club's owner has in Gestifute, Jorge Mendes' representation company. Wolves have a total of ten Portuguese footballers in the first squad – to which must be added the coaching staff, a loaned player and another in the subsidiary.
One of the last to arrive was Fabio Silva, 18, for whom they paid 40 million to Porto despite having only played just 180 league minutes with the Portuguese champion. Now the 30 who invest in Semedo are added. The rest of the Portuguese team are Rui Patricio, Roderick, Vinagre, Neves, Moutinho, Podence, Vitinha, Jota and Neto.