Chelsea have decided to make a public spectacle of Enzo Fernández’s potential (expected?) transfer to Manchester City, by setting a hard deadline of tomorrow evening (Friday, 5pm local time) for City (or any other team) to meet our demands. These demands had been privately communicated to any interested parties already, but now they’re out in the wild as well, no longer just lurking in the rumor mill’s shadows.
And those demands are simple and straightforward: £120m cold hard cash, or go away. That’s
120 million pound sterling; not euros, dollars, or riyals. And that’s 120 million up front, not in bonuses or add-ons or IOU’s.
These demands shouldn’t too hard to understand, but something may have already gotten lost in translation. According to Argentinian journalist-turned-transfer-influencer César Luis Merlo, City have indeed made an offer, but in the wrong currency. €120m is not £120m! In fact, it’s nearly £20m less! (Merlo was a solid source of information during Enzo’s protracted transfer to Chelsea from Benfica, so presumably he’s still got the connections to Enzo’s camp.)
Merlo’s supposed information has not been corroborated by anyone else so far; in fact, Fabrizio Romano has claimed that the situation has not changed at all since yesterday: no offer received, and, obviously, no change in our stance. It’s the battle of the transfer-influencers! How exciting. (It’s not exciting.)
As much as I appreciate the club’s attempt to create our very own Enzo Transfer Deadline Day, I have a feeling that this story will drag on until the actual Transfer Deadline Day at the end of the month.
