Report of $7 million Chivas bid for Duvan Zapata almost certainly a fabrication

There's been a report today that Napoli have rejected a €6 million bid from Mexican club Chivas de Guadalajara for Colombian striker Duvan Zapata, which seems all well and good and reasonable, until certain facts about what such a transfer would mean reveal that report to either be a massive misinterpretation of information given to the original reporter, or an outright fabrication.

The report indicates that Chivas want Zapata to give a major boost to their struggling attack, but that Napoli's internal valuation of Zapata of €15 million meant that Chivas' bid would never have been accepted. But if you know anything about Chivas, you know that the bid never would have existed in the first place.

You see, Duvan Zapata is a player that would never play for Chivas, and would never be under consideration from the Liga MX side to bring in. Chivas has a long-standing policy of only employing players who are current Mexico internationals or are at least eligible for their country's national squad. They've even famously cut loose a number very good youth players who elected to play for other countries' youth national teams over Mexico's.

So unless Zapata secretly has Mexican grandparents that nobody knows about, there's no way he could ever play for Chivas. Zapata was born in Cali, Colombia and played for local side America de Cali until 2011, when he moved to Argentia club Estudiantes. There he stayed until his transfer to Napoli in 2013. There's nothing about his background that suggests recent Mexican heritage, so this report seems to pretty much just be crap.

It's certainly possible that some reporter was fed information that he or she misinterpreted and didn't know about Chivas' Mexicans-only rule, but to be bluntly honest this feels much more like a report that was just made up to garner attention in the chaos that is transfer window deadline day. Just a tip: if you're going to make crap up, at least make sure it's believable.