The Italian press on Wednesday have given us a lot to think about when it comes to Chelsea’s transfer window.
Unable to really take off without knowing who will be in charge of the team next season, their summer is currently paused until the Antonio Conte-Maurizio Sarri situation is resolved.
Despite this, both Corriere dello Sport and Gazzetta dello Sport are acting like it’s pretty much happened, speculating about what the former Napoli manager could change at Stamford Bridge, and their stories are very different.
We’ll start with the latter of the two, who believe Sarri’s main target to bolster Chelsea’s attack is Gonzalo Higuain, with whom he gets along very well following their stint together in the south of Italy.
The idea here would be for Juventus to receive around €63m, which, two years on from his €94m move, would be seen as an acceptable amount, but there’s a few doubts as to whether or not the Blues would be prepared to spend that much money unless Alvaro Morata leaves.
Corriere dello Sport, however, don’t care about any of this and go all out by claiming Sarri wants to bring Mauro Icardi to Stamford Bridge, with the Argentinian star top of the manager’s list of players he’ll be asking Roman Abramovich to get him.
The deal would be very simple: pay the €110m in the Inter striker’s release clause before July 15th and get it over with.
Maurizio Sarri is said to already be working on reshaping the Chelsea squad, having already sat down and watched a large chunk of the London team’s games from last season to get a better idea of what his future players will be able to do.
A lot of this, as you can imagine, is pure speculation, with plenty of ifs and maybes, like the idea the Italian manager could start using Eden Hazard as a false nine like he did at Napoli with Dries Mertens.
Of course, all of this is put at the beginning of the article to get the reader excited, but there’s a lot of points included towards the end of the story that don’t exactly work in Sarri’s favour, like the fact Chelsea won’t be playing in the Champions League next season.
For the first time in 11 years, Inter will, and it’s been one of Icardi’s main goals to get his current team back into the European elite.
Would he really leave a couple of months after achieving that for more money and Europa League football when the Serie A club will be playing the competition of his dreams and appear ready to offer him a new deal should he lower his demands just a little bit?
It seems very unlikely.
Chelsea’s alleged interest is a ‘threat’, if you want to call it that, to Inter’s plans, but they would have to cough up the €110m in its entirety to get Icardi, as the Italian side will not negotiate anything below that.
Until they do that, and Maurizio Sarri actually replaces Antonio Conte at Stamford Bridge, all of this is pretty much pointless.
