Gremio president Romildo Bolzan has spoken out to deny reports of a formal bid for centre-back and rumoured Arsenal target Walter Kannemann.

Earlier this week, Calciomercato.it reported that Arsenal’s interest in Kannemann had ‘become more concrete’ in the last few weeks, and they’d made a €12m offer plus bonuses to sign the defender. They claimed the Gremio hierarchy were ‘carefully evaluating’ the proposal.

According to Gremio president Bolzan, this is far from the truth. Though he was clearly aware of the rumours, Bolzan denied reports of any bids.

“There is a lot of talk about Kannemann, but no one has talked to Grêmio at the moment,” Bolzan said (via Yahoo). “Concretely, with a proposal, no one. So I do not have much to talk about.”

Kannemann is 28 years old and has forced himself into the public eye rather late on in his career. The defender made his debut for Argentina in 2018, after spells with San Lorenzo and Atlas. Now he’s drawing interest from Europe, but seemingly nothing official just yet.

A very strong tackler who rarely makes defensive errors in the Brazilian league, it remains to be seen how Kannemann would adapt in England. He does have a bit of a problem with picking up yellow cards, receiving five in nine games this season already, so perhaps pairing him with Sokratis Papastathopoulos would be a recipe for disaster!

For now, we’ll assume Bolzan’s denial of any concrete contact is accurate.