Sporting Lisbon director calls David Sullivan a liar

Sporting Lisbon director Nuno Saraiva has written a passionate statement in which he claims West Ham’s co-owner David Sullivan lied about making a bid for William Carvalho.

Sullivan claimed, in a column written on West Ham’s official website, that the Hammers made a club-record bid for Sporting midfielder Carvalho earlier this week and that it was accepted too late for a deal to be completed. However, Saraiva claims that this is not true and challenged the West Ham co-owner to prove that any bid was ever made.

Saraiva also took some very clear digs at Sullivan, who used to run an adult magazine company.

The statement, which Saraiva published in Portuguese on Facebook, translates to:

Mr David Sullivan lies. No proposal arrived for the player William Carvalho. The football industry is not the plateau of an adult film in which all obscenities are allowed. For this reason, the boss of a club requires much more than this intellectual pornography. Mr Sullivan has a duty to prove what he says. For this reason, Sporting Clube de Portugal challenges him to publicly show the proposals he says have been made, as well as the evidence that Sporting CP has received them. One thing is sure: Sporting CP, it has been said, does not cut its legs for its athletes. But we have nothing to do with the performance of businessmen or relatives who live at the expense of players and who are offering them from club to club at a price of balance, without a mandate, as if cheap merchandise supermarket, thus devaluing the athlete and the club, and creating lamentable situations that have already forced, in this case, Sporting Clube de Portugal to take drastic measures to defend against these characters that parasitise the lives of some players.

If Sullivan cannot provide proof of his claims, West Ham fans are sure to be furious that they’ve been lied to be the co-owners. The club did some very good business this summer but an owner making false claims about bids, if that is the case, will not go down well with the fanbase at all.