One of the first signings made by Todd Boehly when he took over at Chelsea was that of Kalidou Koulibaly, who was brought in to help replace the departures of Antonio Rüdiger and Andreas Christensen.
While he did so in terms of numbers, the performances that followed from the Senegal international weren’t the ones expected, as the entirety of the Blues struggled last year under three different managers.
The arrival of Mauricio Pochettino will hopefully stabilise everything, but Gazzetta dello Sport make it clear the Argentine and those above him aren’t all that desperate to work with Koulibaly.
The centre-back is someone the people in charge of Stamford Bridge ‘no longer consider essential’ in their project, despite the player wanting to ‘prove’ himself at the club.
Inter Milan’s Piero Ausilio, who is currently in London, ‘met with his agents’ to try and see whether a deal was possible, seeing as he would be a great replacement for the departing Milan Skriniar.
However, ‘it’s not an easy deal’, considering how much Chelsea paid for him and his €10m/year wages in London.
While Koulibaly ‘wants to convince Pochettino’, the overload of centre-backs at the Blues and the emergence of Levi Colwill means he is now considered ‘redundant’ at Stamford Bridge.
As for Inter, they are stuck with the idea of a loan, which Chelsea don’t want, and much like the deal involving Romelu Lukaku, there is a lot of help needed to get something sorted.