Man City believe Jorginho’s Chelsea move is a ruse; Conte compensation still not agreed — reports

Manchester City are either trying to save face, are not giving up, or a bit of both as reports today from up north ensure that this saga isn’t quite over yet.

Earlier today, Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis more or less confirmed that Jorginho wants to move London (i.e. Chelsea) instead of Manchester City, making a big show of apologizing to City regarding the transfer. (He was talking at Ancelotti’s official unveiling as new Napoli head coach.)

“Jorginho? We said to ourselves, ‘if Jorginho has any requests, we’ll take them into account.’

“For that, I’ll have to apologise to Manchester City. However, if the player would rather live in London than Manchester, I can understand that. If Chelsea are paying him even more, I can understand that too.”

-Aurelio De Laurentiis; source: Telegraph

ADL tends to say a lot of bold and annoying things, but he’s generally not an outright liar. There’s no reason to believe he’s making up things about Jorginho’s desires, especially as he’s openly talked about the transfer (then set for Manchester City) before.

Still, City quickly made it known through their usual channels that they don’t believe the situation is over just yet.

Meanwhile, Matt Law of the Teleraph finally chimed in as well, mostly by rehashing the developments and the reports from Italy thus far. He puts the total value of the deal at £50m (€57m) for both Jorginho and Sarri — which matches the non-bonus part of the €65m (€57+8m) reported in Italy — though ADL in the same press conference stopped short of confirming Sarri in the same manner as he did Jorginho.

“The Sarri deal is in the homestretch, it depends on him. I’ve laid down my conditions. It’s all in the hands of lawyers.

[...]

“Jorginho and Sarri together again? Jorginho would go to Chelsea regardless of Sarri.”

-Aurelio De Laurentiis; source: Telegraph

Law’s report does drop a couple interesting bits. First is that Cesc Fàbregas is not part of the deal — not sure when he was dragging into this as some sort of part-compensation, but he’s not interested in leaving. And second is that despite all these developments, Chelsea still have not “reached an agreement to terminate” Conte’s contract, and while Law calls that basically a formality at this point, it was never more than that since the very beginning of this sorry saga.

We may not be done with the twists and turns in what has now become a three-pronged (Conte, Sarri, Jorginho) saga.