It can be disheartening in football when you see a player choosing money over sporting ambition, but you would always expect a selling club to simply take the highest possible bid for any player.
It was widely expected that Sassuolo would lose Manuel Locatelli after he excelled with Italy as they won Euro 2020 this summer, but a report from Football Italia has indicated that Arsenal are unlucky to miss out on him.
They claim that the Gunners were ready to pay €45m and the majority of that would’ve been paid upfront, but it appears the player had his heart set on a move to Juventus.
It sounds like Sassuolo have gone out of their way to help Locatelli here, as the terms with Juventus will see him go on loan with an initial fee of €10m, there will be an obligation to buy for around €25m and another €10m in bonuses, so Arsenal’s offer was clearly so much more attractive when it comes to the finances.
There may be a slight sticking point as Juve would like that to be an option to buy rather than an obligation, but Sassuolo won’t budge on that at all.
Everything currently points to him going to Juve rather than Arsenal, but that was to be expected.