The incredible days in the week before the start of the championship: total agreement with the Friulian club, the one with the player missed due to the intervention of the parent in a history of agents and commissions
It was the soap opera of August 15th under the umbrella of Inter fans and beyond. Vanished after a flash of poison in the week that led to the start of the championship, the path that was leading Lazar Samardzic from Udinese to Inter had been outlined for some time and well paved at least since the beginning of July, when the midfielder and the return of Lukaku they had been identified as the target in which to reinvest the treasure received from the sales of Brozovic and Onana. In the end neither of them arrived, in both cases with accusations of betrayal shouted from Viale della Liberazione.
SCENES FROM A WEDDING
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The alarm sounds on Friday 11 August: on the finishing line the deal for Samardzic at Inter falls through. Yet only the day before the German Serbian had smiled like a new Inter fan at the fans waiting for him outside the medical examinations carried out together with Audero by Humanitas in Rozzano and at the CONI Sports Medicine Institute. From there the goalkeeper went to the Inter headquarters to sign, and on the same day it was already official. Lazar no: waiting to do it the day after the arrival in the city of his father and his agent, Rafaela Pimenta, that signature never arrived. Yet the agreement between the clubs was total: loan of 4.5 million, paid with the sale of Fabbian, plus a redemption obligation of 16 million plus two bonuses. However, Samardzic’s five-year deal with Inter has fallen through. Or rather – we will understand better and better as the hours pass – the commissions linked to the contract, including future resale.
BUT ON THE ALTAR…
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The image of the implosion of the deal is the arrival at the Inter headquarters, on that pre-August Friday, not of Rafaela Pimenta but of Samardzic’s father, after having officially removed the power of attorney from the agent heir to Mino’s empire Raiola, with whom the Nerazzurri management had found total agreement, in detail. Only to then see the midfielder’s father, who moved to the L10S Sports agency, return with the claim of raising the bar again, changing the cards on the table. There’s no talking about it, Inter immediately says: no to new meetings, we sign the previous agreements, Samardzic has 48 hours to return to the already ready agreement or nothing will happen. On August 13th Samardzic packs his bags and returns to Udine, a harbinger of a happy ending that will never come. The new change of power of attorney, moving to Tds Sports, is not enough, because the requests remain: re-discussing an agreement already found. Mid-August passes and the final word arrives on Wednesday 16th.
THE FATHER
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Time for the dust to settle and Samardzic’s father has his say on 22 August: “Inter made a mistake: they did all the negotiations and closed the deal with a person who didn’t have permission to do it – referring to Rafaela Pimenta -. But I’ve only seen her once in my life. I don’t know how she managed to get into this thing: we found ourselves in the middle, wanting to close the deal without our permission. So when I received the draft contract from Inter and we saw that you were there as an intermediary and representative of Lazar, we asked for it to be changed.” And again: “We never talked about money”, revealing his own version: “The first time I sat in the Inter office, I said to Ausilio: ‘Look, I’ve never seen any contract so far, any offer’. So he printed it out for me at that appointment and I told him: ‘Here, now is the first time I’ve seen these numbers’. And it was all over, he said we had nothing left to discuss.”
RAFAELA
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Within a few hours, Rafaela Pimenta’s response arrived: “I’m sorry that Samardzic’s father justified his decisions with these arguments – the prosecutor said in a statement -. For me the facts speak for themselves. From the meeting I had with him and his wife together with Kolarov in my office in Monte Carlo, to the many calls made together to the various clubs, to his request to Udinese to speak directly with me”. Not only that: “Our appointment together at the Inter headquarters, the ok given to Inter, the toasts with him and his wife in a hotel in Milan, the video call with his son to organize the medical visits, the arrival of other family members and the cameraman for the video shooting. After all this, the father made requests that I did not agree with in substance and form and at that moment I decided to step aside”. Hands forward 100 days: we start again.
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