Ex-Chelsea boss reveals how close he got to signing Spurs superstar

Former Chelsea and Tottenham boss Andre Villas-Boas has revealed that he thought Luka Modric’s transfer to Stamford Bridge was ‘done’ in the summer of 2011.

Modric evolved into one of the best midfielders in the Premier League at Spurs after arriving at the club in the summer of 2008 from Dinamo Zagreb.

The midfielder was heavily linked with a move to Chelsea in the summer of 2011 – the same summer that AVB took over as the Blues’ head coach – but Daniel Levy held firm and managed to keep hold of the Croat (Guardian).

Modric eventually left Tottenham to join Real Madrid one year later, and the player has gone on to become one of the all-time greats in the Spanish capital, having won five Champions League titles and even the Ballon d’Or.

Villas-Boas has now opened up on how close Chelsea came to snapping up the former Tottenham man and also revealed that he wanted to sign Joao Moutinho for both London clubs.

He told The Telegraph “Of course, we (Chelsea) missed the [Luka] Modric deal at the beginning of the season (2011-12). If the Modric deal was not to be done there was the [Joao] Moutinho deal to be done. That was the promise of Roman [Abramovich] at that time.

“Moutinho joined the Premier League years and years after I tried – proposing to both Chelsea and Tottenham – and everybody has seen the player that he is. So that denial of him was a failure that you can’t [blame on] a coach.

“I thought that we had the Modric deal done and he ended up in Real Madrid the season after. Then the Moutinho deal was to be done with Porto but the problem was the deal [for Chelsea] for the left-back of Porto, Alvaro Pereira, fell through.

“Roman felt p***ed off. So, no Modric, no Moutinho…[Radamel] Falcao is another one that was about to come in but then you had [Didier] Drogba who couldn’t decide whether he wanted to leave or not in January.”

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One can argue that Levy’s decision to reject Chelsea’s offer for Modric and sell the midfielder to Real Madrid for a lower fee the subsequent year, was the biggest turning point in the Croat’s career, given what he has gone on to achieve with Los Blancos.