Central defender says he was happy to stay with Italian outfit.
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Highly rated Catania defender Nicolas Spolli has revealed that he turned down the chance to sign for Premier League giants Tottenham Hotspur earlier this summer, according to reports on talkSPORT.co.uk.
The Argentinian has been with the Serie A outfit for the past four years, after originally arriving at the club from Newell’s Old Boys in his homeland in July 2009.
And in the intervening four-year period, the 3o-year-old centre-back has managed to appear in 112 league matches for Catania, during which time Spolli has hit the back of the net on five occasions.
However, despite claiming that Tottenham head coach Andre Villas-Boas was interested in bringing him to the Premier League this season, Spolli claims that he never had any intention whatsoever of swapping the Stadio Angelo Massimino for White Hart Lane this summer.
“At the end of last season I met with the president. I told him, if he agreed, that I would like to stay in Catania. The team knew my desire – it was not news when we received the request from Tottenham,” Spolli told La Sicilia.
“In Catania I’m fine, it’s a beautiful city. When you have free time it is amazing to be able to enjoy both Mount Etna and the sea.”
The north London club themselves have just had a hectic summer of transfer business, as Villas-Boas tried to rebuild the team in the wake of wide-man Gareth Bale’s world-record transfer to Spanish giants Real Madrid.
However, in the end the Portuguese ended up buying Romania international centre-back Vlad Chiriches from Steaua Bucharest to help fill the gap left by the departure of Steven Caulker in the heart of the club’s back four.