Sam Lee, the Manchester City correspondent for The Athletic, has been discussing the latest on Kalidou Koulibaly’s future on a recent episode of Why Always Us?
Pep Guardiola’s side have been linked with a move for the 29-year-old defender but according to Lee, as things stand, the Senegalese centre-back will not be swapping Naples for Manchester.
According to Transfermarkt, Koulibaly is currently valued at £58.5m, and although the journalist didn’t discuss figures, we can assume, based on what he had to say, that the Premier League club are yet to meet Napoli’s valuation of the former Genk man.
Here is what he had to say:
“Koulibaly, I keep dancing around this, but if you haven’t heard, [the move for] Koulibaly is basically off. Like I said when I read out that live tweet earlier on, the story I wrote on Monday was Koulibaly is basically off – [City] made a take-it-or-leave-it offer, or an ultimatum, or however you want to call it around two weeks ago – and Napoli were like, ‘well forget it, then.’
“I don’t know who was calling whose bluff there, because City want him and Napoli want to sell, but the situation they’re in now is at the moment, they’ve walked away.”
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Koulibaly played during Napoli’s victory over Parma last weekend and according to WhoScored.com, he put in an impressive display, earning himself a performance rating of 7.49/10. For now, at least, it seems he remains in Gennaro Gattuso’s plans.
The transfer window remains open until October 5th, and so whilst we cannot completely rule out a move for the defender to the Etihad Stadium, going by Lee’s comments, it is beginning to feel unlikely.