Furthermore, Law 13 of the laws of the game state that “where three or more defending team players form a ‘wall’, all attacking team players must remain at least 1 m (1 yd) from the ‘wall’ until the ...

Their pursuit of Eze has been long and arduous, and to see the process wrecked in its final stages would have rendered those efforts a complete waste of time.

Talks had been edging towards £65m on Tuesday afternoon.