Forest, Jota Silva, and Sporting: Everything you need to know about the failed deal | OneFootball

A year after leaving Portugal for the Premier League, Jota Silva once again became a hot topic in his home country.

Portuguese champions Sporting CP tried until the summer transfer window closed on Monday to secure the Portuguese international from Nottingham Forest, but ultimately failed to complete the process in time.

But what went wrong? Let's explain...

The negotiations between the two sides had been going on for a long time. Nottingham Forest, who have strengthened their team with spending once again, saw the 26-year-old player as surplus. Sporting was interested, especially since Rui Borges has been a long-standing admirer.

Meanwhile, Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis saw Sporting investing heavily in the market and making several approaches to relatively big names. it was a potential opportunity to make a good profit from a surplus player.

Sporting, although interested in the player, preferred a loan switch instead of buying with the chance to make the move permanent later. The Lions ended up dragging the process into the last days of the market as a strategy to try to get Nottingham to release the player more easily.

However, this clash of approaches to the process took everything to the last minute and led to the collapse of the deal...by two minutes, according to our sister site zerozero.

Everything fell apart in two minutes

Despite this back-and-forth between the two parties, Sporting did not give up and made several approaches throughout Monday, the last day of the summer transfer window in the majority of European leagues. Marinakis resisted and, by 10pm in mainland Portugal, the outlook was for the to at last collapse.

However, around 11 p.m., Sporting made a new offer of €4.5 million for the loan, with an option to buy for €15.5 million, that was eventually accepted.

A true marathon followed among all parties in exchanging contracts and paperwork and only by 11:45 p.m. was everything concluded, 15 minutes before the market closed.

Sporting began the process of sending the documentation to the Liga Portugal and the TMS (FIFA Transfer Matching System). The club was successful with the latter but it took longer than expected in the league.

However, it more important that the documentation had been entered on time domestically than with FIFA and it was already a minute or two past the deadline (midnight) when the LPFP services received the paperwork related to this file.

The two clubs, and Sporting's legal department, tried hard to frame the situation in a way to facilitate the deal, but this was not possible and the entry into the TMS became unfeasible.

This means that, at least for now, Jota Silva remains a player at Nottingham Forest, but this may not be for long.

Looking for a new club

Amid all this turmoil, Jota Silva – who has a contract until 2028 – remains a Forest player for now and is training at the club's facilities. However, it is expected that he will leave, trying to place himself in one of the few still open markets.

The player values the sporting aspect so much that he recently rejected a financially advantageous approach from Qatar, in an attempt to complete the move to Alvalade. For this reason, he is trying to find a place in Turkey, where, in the past, clubs like Besiktas and Fenerbahçe have shown interest in signing him – although without concrete offers at the time.

However, considering the very advanced stage of the market, the majority of Turkish clubs already have done of the majority of the business and they have a limited number of foreign players to register, which may complicate the process.

Therefore, there is openness on the part of the player, who wants to sort out his situation, knowing that he will not be an option in England, to leave on loan for a season to the Middle East, where he has interested parties.