Have you ever wished for a transfer story to die a slow and very painful death? Like something out of the Saw movies? No? Oh.
Well, we have, and close to topping that list is the whole Maurizio Sarri to Chelsea mess.
After weeks of the same information being tweaked, with tidbits of new details thrown in to keep it alive, Il Mattino on Monday throw us a curveball that’s both ridiculous and believable at the same time.
Before we continue, we’d just like to make one thing clear: Aurelio de Laurentiis doesn’t care about your or our feelings one bit, and will do whatever benefits both him and Napoli the most.
You can’t blame him, after all, since it’s his business and he wants what’s best for it, but if the Italian newspaper are to be believed, he’s about to stab Manchester City in the back after leading them on for the past couple of months.
According to Il Mattino, in the past few hours, Jorginho has ‘distanced himself’ from teaming up with Pep Guardiola at the Etihad and ‘moved closer’ to Roman Abramovich’s club.
The reason for this is, of course, money, and the possibility of killing two birds with one stone, as a Jorginho transfer could help Sarri become Chelsea’s new manager quicker.
Should the Italian manager convince the Blues to spend big on the Italy international, Napoli would receive €60m up front, bonuses not included, while a transfer to Manchester City would see the Serie A side ‘only’ receive €55m + €7-8m in bonuses.
Our guess here is the agreement struck for Jorginho’s deal would also include the money that would free Sarri from his contract with his former club, even if that isn’t explicitly mentioned in the article.
Roman Abramovich is said to have slept on the matter, and is expected to make a decision on Monday at some stage.
We’ll believe it when we see it.
