According to Milano based Gazzetta dello Sport, Inter are one step away from signing Ivan Rakitic and in fact, there has already been a meeting between the Nerazzurri and the Barcelona management, with the gap between the asking price and offer on the table now thought to be minimal.
In short, there are no obstacles to this deal going through in the summer. With Rakitic and Godin: the Inter transfer market starts to take flight. In great secrecy, the Nerazzurri CEO Beppe Marotta and the DS Piero Ausilio met the management of the Catalan club and laid the foundations for an agreement of around €40 million.
This is the most likely point of understanding, considering that the last offer from the Nerazzurri was €35 million, while Bartomeu’s staff are holding out for €45 million. Suffice to say that the negotiations have entered a critical time over the last week after an initial request of €50 million, which evidently at that time was far from the €30 million put on the plate at the beginning by the Nerazzurri management.
From the very beginning, however, there has been a sense of mutual understanding. Unlike what happened last summer with Real Madrid for Luka Modric, that resulted in a complaint by Florentino Perez to Fifa, this time the Nerazzurri immediately went direct to the Blaugrana management, asking to sit down at the table to talk about the transfer and the Catalans therefore started the dialogue without suspicion. It is also true that at the Nou Camp they can no longer continue as they have been if they want to avoid the punishments of Financial Fair Play and this has led Bartomeu and their staff to seriously consider this offer.
Rakitic has given his consent to the transfer to Inter for a while, it is his favoured destination after realising that he no longer has a starring role at Barça who will welcome De Jong and, almost certainly Rabiot in the summer.
After the formal go-ahead from Barcelona, the directors of Inter will iron out the terms of the contractual aspects with Dejan Rakitic, the brother-agent of the midfielder born in Switzerland, in Rheinfelden, Basel. Rakitic will turn 31 next March and in these negotiations a family friend plays an important role, the intermediary expert Swiss-Italian Giacomo Petradito.
Raketa – rocket in Croatian – is under contract with Barcelona until 2021 and has a base salary of €5.5 million net per season. On the table from Inter there is at least a three-year contract on which it will be necessary to work when the two teams have defined their agreement in detail.
There is optimism, because at this stage Barcelona and Inter are, more than anything, just comparing the methods of payments, such as how many installments and over how many years, and the inevitable bonuses evidently linked to the results of the team.
