Chelsea brought in Mateo Kovacic on a season-long loan spell from La Liga side Real Madrid.
And the midfielder has been an important part of Maurizio Sarri’s plans during the current season.
So far, Mateo Kovacic has played in 30 leagues games for Chelsea but most of them have been substitute appearances in tandem with Ross Barkley.
Recently Maurizio Sarri had claimed that he wants to keep the midfielder at Chelsea claiming: ‘I want to try with Kovacic,
‘He is only on loan, of course, but I’d like very much that Kovacic will stay with us.
‘You know very well that, in that position, we have some problems because we have only Jorginho. In my opinion, Kovacic could become a very good central midfielder.’
The loan deal expires at the end of the season but Chelsea do have the option to buy him permanently during the summer transfer window or atleast they had.
A couple of months ago, it was more or less evident that Sarri would trigger the buy clause given that Zinedine Zidane had made it clear that Mateo Kovacic has no future at Real Madrid.
Kovacic too wants to stay behind at Chelsea given that he has been seeing regular game time at Stamford Bridge but now it looks like the midfielder could be on his way out at the end of the season.
Right now there is a transfer embargo on Chelsea which bars the club to make any new signings during the next two transfer windows which means even if Sarri wants, he will not be able to buy Mateo Kovacic.
While another loan spell is possibly on the cards but if reports are to be believed then Zidane does not want to go into that hassle and is planning to offload Mateo Kovacic permanently.
The Real Madrid boss wants money to fund the transfer of Eden Hazard as a result of which the La Liga side are willing to listen to Zenit St Petersburg’s offer to buy Mateo Kovacic permanently.
Zidane is happy to sell the midfielder to anyone who is willing to meet the transfer price tag but right now Chelsea are in no position to make the loan deal permanent which automatically puts Zenit in the driver’s seat.
