INTER OPINION: Selling Brozovic to buy Soriano would be a mistake
Inter return from Rome with some good news and some bad news: the good aspect being that they were able to stand up to one of Serie A's best attackind sides, and come away with a share of the points.
The bad news, however, is that the Champions League is more and more of a mirage at this stage: with 8 games to go, the Nerazzurri are 5 points short of their Saturday opponents, and aren't the only team in the race, anyway.
This, however, shouldn't lead people to assume that the team will be stripped down, or become a huge fire sale just because they're not hitting the Champions League pinata.
Yes, the budget will change, but it doesn't mean that Inter have to sell their crown jewels, especially two of Saturday's big stars in Marcelo Brozovic and Ivan Perisic. Whilst the latter is the object of another cm.com article from Fabrizio Romano, reminding fans of the time Everton nearly snapped him up from under Inter's noses, it is Brozovic who has attracted all the market attention. He put up a man-of-the-match performance against two opponents of the calibre of Miralem Pjanic and Radja Nainggolan, providing an assist to Perisic and going on a few of his classic forays forward. This included making 44 passes, a record for the season.
And yet, despite complimenting him ("he can become a champion"), Coach Roberto Mancini only recently compared him to one of Inter's transfer targets: "Soriano has shown that is ahead of Brozovic because he has more experience, Marcelo still needs to develop a lot".
Really?
Though a year younger than Soriano, Brozovic (who is 23) already has a Champions League curriculum (12 games, of which 6 in the qualifiers), Europa League (14) and the Croatian national team (14, including one at the 2014 World Cup), without forgetting his 119 games in the Croatian league, his 39 Serie A games. Add it all up and he's played 208 professional matches, and scored 29 times.
Soriano has more experience...in Serie A. That's it. He's played 115 times there, but otherwise only has 43 Serie B games 2 ill-fated Europa League games (against Vojvodina), 8 with Italy... that's 174 games, and 21 goals.
Why sacrifice Brozovic for Soriano, unless a truly huge offer arrives from the Premier League?
Cristian Giudici @CriGiudici, translated by @EdoDalmonte
