Manchester City are now the only team still in for Kalidou Koulibaly, according to reports. Liverpool supposedly have interest in the player, too.
This comes from Il Mattino in Italy. The outlet believes that while plenty of teams want Koulibaly, only City are looking to negotiate.
The reason for that? Money, of course. Napoli want around £90m for the defender and no one else can get close to that – particularly in the current economic climate.
In fact, even City may struggle to pay the necessary fee. The climate affected them, too, while their Financial Fair Play issues remain.
This all means that despite months of reports claiming he’s off, Koulibaly may remain in Naples after all.
Plenty of those reports surrounded Liverpool, of course. Gazzetta Dello Sport claimed in early May that the Reds led the chase for the player.
And links continued, with the latest coming from TuttoMercatoWeb just three days ago. They said then that an approach from Liverpool would happen this week.
What RTK has to say
Either that TMW report was wrong, or Liverpool made their approach and quickly learned the move was a no-go. Koulibaly’s arrival doesn’t look likely, then.
In truth, City need Koulibaly more than Liverpool do. They’re also richer, thanks to their owners and flexible interpretation of Financial Fair Play rules.
Thus if they can’t find the money, we can’t expect Liverpool to. Koulibaly is 29, after all, and a £90m would be an extravagant purchase – the kind the Reds don’t really make unless they have to.
We said three days ago that we just couldn’t see this one happening and this new report only backs that up.
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