Rumour Mongering: Inter Milan Must Sell Liverpool-Linked Nicolò Barella

With Liverpool’s aging and injury-prone midfield core increasingly in need of an overhaul and no certainty that they will be able to bring in top target Jude Bellingham in 2023, it’s inevitable that the club will be linked with any number of players in the coming months.

This week, then, we get news out of Italy bringing with it a familiar name: Inter Milan’s 25-year-old box-to-box star Nicolò Barella. According to the rumour mongers at CalcioMercato, at least, Barella could now be on the chopping block—and could even be sold in January.

If true, it would represent something of a significant change given the Reds were linked with Barella over the past summer but that at the time the consensus out of Italy was that the player was unavailable as Inter considered the Italian international to be untouchable.

Inter, though, are ratifying their new budget this week. And they’re set to be around €140M in the red—and facing threat of UEFA sanction. That has them considering a January sale for at least one of defender Alessandro Bastoni, striker Lautaro Martinez, or midfielder Barella.

Or at least that’s the story amongst those looking for an angle to link Inter’s stars with a move to an English club with relatively deep pockets, and so link they have with Liverpool and Tottenham said to want Barella and Manchester City said to hold interest in Bastoni.

Whether there’s any truth to the rumour is another matter entirely, but Barella has been linked with the Reds before—and seemingly reliably so—making him a plausible target of opportunity should Inter decide they have no choice but to sell him to balance the books.