Juventus and AC Milan locked in heated battle over Inter midfielder

There are times when the transfer market period offers wonderful stories that fill fans with hope, and times where it seems like it is doing its best to annoy fans by coming up with the most ridiculous rumors possible. This qualifies under the second option. Reports have surfaced that both Juventus and Milan are interested in acquiring Fredy Guarin. Let's take these rumors one at a time and dissect why they are most likely never going to happen.

Juventus: So the "logic" behind this is since Juve are about to sell Vidal to Bayern they want a replacement midfielder and Guarin is somebody they have had their eyes on for a while. Well speaking of prior interest, think back to the January transfer window of 2014. There was a little trade between Inter and Juventus that almost went through but was pulled at the last minute. Who was that deal about oh wait it was Guarin. Mazzarri wanted a striker and somebody though it would be a great idea to swap Guarin for Mirko Vucinic+ cash. In case you forgot what happened next, the fans were not happy in the slightest. There were protests by the Curva in front of Inter HQ and they also released a statement accusing Thohir of not acting in the team's best interests by making this trade. In light of all these protests Thohir cancelled the trade (much to the ire of Juventus management) and ended up buying Hernanes to placate the fan's anger. I wonder if history is ever relevant...?

Milan: The more credible of the two rumors (just barely) sees a potential swap between Guarin and Alessio Cerci. At a half-glance this could make some sense: Mancini needs wingers and has a lot of central midfielders so why not? Well there are a couple of reasons for why not. First, Mancini is probably not all that happy with Cerci. If you remember Cerci was close to joining Inter before rejecting the Nerazzurri and heading to Milan (which is how we ended up with Podolski...fun times). So apparently Mancini is less than keen on bringing him in right now and would rather pursue another winger like Perisic. Second, this deal is reported to be a loan swap and I don't know about you, but I feel like a loan swap between rivals is an absolutely terrible idea. Usually when a player joins a club they go through all the lines about how they're so excited to be at the new club, how big of a club it is and how they want to win with them/make the fans fall in love with them, etc. All that gushing is not going to go over well once the loan ends and they return to their old team. And one can only imagine how awkward things would be if one of them scored in the Derby/kissed their new team's badge...

On top of all of this, back when Guarin was being linked to Galatasaray (and those stories still haven't completely died down by the way) his agent came out and talked about how they are not interested in going to another club and how the 29 year old only wants Inter. He even spoke of how Guarin dreams of being the club's captain and that "there is nobody in the world who loves Inter as much as Fredy". While I feel like his agent was just trying to talk his way back into fans' hearts at that point it does really seem like Guarin wants to stay. And if he does have end up leaving (due to our very large squad) it would make much more sense for Inter to send him out of the country than to either the defending champions or the other team attempting to rebuild for a CL run this upcoming season.

There is a reason this time is also known as the "silly season", because of nonsense like this.

(Disclaimer: Remember I also said the Miranda deal would never happen when the rumors of that first broke so take my editorializing with a grain of salt)