Inter’s sporting director Marco Branca told BBC Sport that Inter have ruled out a move for Manchester City striker Carlos Tevez:
“Tevez is a great player, a great character, but absolutely no. His salary means it is out of the question. The market is crazy at the moment and it is hard to compete. We have to organise our finances for the financial fair play rules in the next two years. We don’t have the same revenues from merchandise and match day as the English sides. We are looking for younger players now with great talent, who we can develop.””
Tevez is on something like 300,000 euros a week at Man City and Branca said Inter are revising their wage bill ahead of Uefa’s financial fair play regulations, which come into force in 2012/13 and require clubs to balance their books if they are to compete in Europe.
Branca added Inter have been priced out of deals for other players.
“Take [Udinese winger] Alexis Sanchez, a player we liked,” he said. “Manchester City raised their bid for him to 35m euros [£31.2m] plus a bonus, which ruled us out of the race. In the end, the player preferred to go to Barcelona and they got him for 28m [£25m] and a 10m [£8.9m] bonus. Not many clubs can afford that.”
This is the last summer before the UEFA fair play rules go into effect and it will be really interesting to see what happens to player wages and transfer fees then. It is hard to compete financially with clubs like Chelsea and Man City whose owners are willing to spend hundreds of millions of euros on players with no hope of every getting that money back.