Inter’s stubbornness on Manchester United’s interest Perisic is becoming more and more bizarre by the day.
It’s a well-known fact the Serie A club desperately (it’s reached that stage now) need €30m by the end of the week to meet FFP regulations, yet, instead of showing first signs of softening their stance as many expected, they’ve cranked it up to 11 and pretty much given the Red Devils the middle finger.
This is, in essence, what Corriere dello Sport are reporting on Monday in their daily newspaper.
According to the Italian outlet, who go with the relatively original headline “SPECIAL NO”, the lack of reasonable offers matching their €50m demands has led to Inter Milan offering the Croatia international a new deal when they met with his agent on Friday.
Of course, it’s easy to find the source of this stubbornness, which stems from their desire to please the new man they’ve put in charge of the team, Luciano Spalletti, who would much prefer to keep his star winger for next season.
The idea here would be to extend his contract by a year until 2021, as well as upping his wage from €3m/year to €4m/year, which is still €1m less than the €5m/year Manchester United are offering him to move to Old Trafford.
Inter are said to know that Perisic has reached an agreement with the Premier League club, but their stance remains the same: €50m before the end of the month or nothing.
Maybe it’s just us, but if you need lemons to make a lemonade by Friday and someone offers you a crate of them as well as sugar and water, you take it.
You don’t go “That’s nice, but I also want a jug and some ice cubes.”
However, even if we said this is all bizarre (it is), we do get it.
It’s still very much a hypothetical scenario, but if, and it’s a big one, Inter manage to raise the €30m via other means and Ed Woodward doesn’t turn up with €50m by Friday, then Inter are in a very strong position.
They’ll have avoided further FFP sanctions and kept their star player, meaning they’d be able to increase their demands for Perisic to three flying pigs and a unicorn, if they so wish.
But, even if the interest for other players in Inter’s squad is there, offers are yet to arrive, meaning the Serie A side are playing a very dangerous game.
And this is why, despite the big headline making Inter look very strong to all their fans, the article still mentions a lot of ‘ifs’ when it comes to this particular dream scenario.
There’s also two instances where Corriere explain Manchester United could come back with an improved offer by the end of the week, even labelling it ‘probable’, which Inter would feel obliged to accept now.
Down the player’s end, while his agent hasn’t completely closed the door on staying at Inter, Perisic himself is ‘still thinking about a transfer’.
Unless two or three sales are announced by Thursday, and there’s been no indication that any are close yet, this could get very, very interesting.
