The stories linking future Inter Milan star Mateo Kovacic with a move away from the San Siro will not go away, with the most recent version suggesting that Inter will use the €30m from the Kovacic sale to buy Yaya Toure from Manchester City whom Coach Roberto Mancini has repeatedly asked for.
If Inter do this they are out of their mind. Did the Nerazzurri learn nothing from prematurely giving up on
Philippe Coutinho, who has blossomed into a true star at Liverpool? All the signs were there that Coutinho could be a special player when he played at Inter, but the club did not have the patience to see him develop and now Liverpool have a 22-year-old potential superstar on their hands.
And shockingly they look poised to make the same mistake with Kovacic. Kovacic, like Coutinho, shows flashes of greatness at Inter, but he has not be able to put in a string of consistently good performances and as a result has fallen out of favor with Mancini.
Instead of waiting for Kovacic to develop, Mancini wants to see the 20-year-old sold and replaced with the soon to be 32-year-old Toure. There is no denying that Toure is a great player. But he will be 32 when next Serie A season kicks off, meaning he night have one or two years at the top at Inter. Why would you them sell someone a decade younger, who could dominate Serie A for the next ten years for one or two years of Yaya Toure?
The answer is that Mancini does not think that he has time to see Kovacic develop. He needs results now, or will be out of a job, and in that case Toure is a better option than Kovacic. But that is where the Inter front office, like club legend Javier Zanetti, have to step in and look at the big picture.
Selling Mateo Kovacic to buy Yaya Toure will be a worse decision than the one to sell Philippe Coutinho to Liverpool for 10 million euros.
