Fiorentina declare that Federico Chiesa is not for sale this summer

Just a few short hours after La Gazzetta dello Sport ran a front-page story saying that Fiorentina young star winger Federico Chiesa wanted to club Florence and go to one of Italy’s big clubs this summer, that all looks to be a crock of you-know-what.

That’s mainly because Fiorentina have come out and told us that themselves.

Which means, of course, Juventus won’t be adding a talented young Italian in his early-20s with the first name of Federico for the second time in three summers in all likelihood now.

The statement in full from Fiorentina’s official website, as translated by Football Italia:

“We have read continuous news about Chiesa’s future and where he will play next season. The current owners would like to point out that Federico is a Fiorentina player, linked to the club by a long contract, and therefore, as far as we are concerned, Chiesa will play in Florence next season. He must be a symbolic player for the team we will build.”

There you have it.

As far as the current owners are concerned — and, assuming so, the same goes for the man who is rumored to be officially taking over as Fiorentina’s owner any day now.

But with all the drama surrounding Fiorentina over the past season — be it the ownership situation or just the general state of the team as they tumbled down the table and only officially secured their status in Serie A for next season on the final day of the 2018-19 campaign — one might have understood if Chiesa wanted to test the summer transfer window waters and see what’s out there. He has long been linked with a move to the big boys of Italian football, namely Juventus and Inter, with the 21-year-old winger being one of the bigger names being thrown out there as a possible replacement if Juve were to depart with somebody like Paulo Dybala or Douglas Costa this summer.

All of that seems like it won’t be happening now.

Fiorentina has shut the door as much as they possibly can on Chiesa leaving Florence this summer. It’s not often that Italian clubs come out and issue statements about their star player’s name being thrown about in the Italian press on any given day in transfer rumor season mainly because it happens so often. But, with all of the rumors surrounding Chiesa in recent weeks — and months — and the likelihood of an ownership switch happening in the not-so-distant future, declaring that their best player isn’t going anywhere is probably something that made a whole lot of sense to those still in charge in Florence.

I mean, the last thing I’d expect Rocco Commisso to do is to drop a couple hundred million euros on Fiorentina in hopes of building them back up to being a dangerous Serie A side again and then suddenly approve the sale of cornerstone player that’s already on the roster.