Kalidou Koulibaly’s agent hits back at constant Chelsea and Liverpool nonsense

Napoli center back Kalidou Koulibaly was a centerpiece of Chelsea’s 2016 summer transfer window; obviously, given the fact that he remains a Napoli center back to this day, it wasn’t exactly a successful pursuit from the Blues’ perspective. A few reports have wanted to get that drama re-started this summer as well, but Chelsea’s attentions have been elsewhere — though the most recent developments there also involve retreads on Bonucci and Van Dijk, for whatever those are worth (SPOILER: probably very little).

Meanwhile, Koulibaly signed a brand new five-year contract in September, and that’s got his agent singing a different tune as well these days.

“Important players can receive offers, but at the moment he’s a Napoli player and they can also reject them.”

“Every day you can read about interested clubs, in terms of rumours you in Italy are top of the world. It’s nonsense, and you don’t only do it with Kalidou. There’s a healthy working relationship with Napoli.”

“Chelsea and Liverpool? I always talk with these kind of clubs, but about all of my clients, not just Kalidou. I do my job, we’re in the transfer window.”

-Bruno Satin; source: Radio CRC via Metro

Koulibaly’s agent is hardly blameless in this whole mess we call the rumor mill. He certainly played his part in stoking the flames last summer, and got his client one of the two exact outcomes they would’ve been working towards: either a big-money transfer or a new contract and pay rise.

But the agent’s quotes do reveal that at least for this summer, the Koulibaly rumors, like the vast majority of rumors, are nothing but sensationalist nonsense.

That doesn’t mean we should stop paying attention to them — it would be a really boring summer otherwise and Silly Season is fun and ridiculous and hilarious and sometimes quite tremendous — just a reminder to keep expectations on a common sense level. Inquiries don’t mean signings, links don’t mean transfers, interest doesn’t mean multi-million pound bids, dreams don’t mean reality, not even at Chelsea, and so on and so forth...