A three-way blame game is now being played between Aston Villa, Fiorentina and RB Leipzig after defender Kosta Nedeljkovic failed to join the Italian side on deadline day.
Fiorentina News and Labaro Viola cover the situation today and how none of the three clubs want to take responsibility for the matter.
Nedeljkovic was supposed to join Fiorentina on loan on Monday. He’s currently on loan at RB Leipzig from Aston Villa. The plan was to cancel that and then send him to Italy. Reports, even late in the window, suggested that it could be done before the deadline on Monday evening.
Instead, it never ended up happening, but nobody is taking the blame. Labaro Viola kick things off, with information from La Nazione. The newspaper reports that the failure was Leipzig’s.
According to their information, the German club ‘procrastinated’ when submitting the documents to terminate Nedeljkovic’s loan. That saw the deal collapse at the last minute.
This is backed up by Fiorentina News and agent Lorenzo De Santis. He appeared on Lady Radio, analysing Fiorentina’s transfer business. That includes Nedeljkovic. According to him, the blame lies with Leipzig.
“You always leave it to the last minute because you think you can get the best deal,” he said.
“But then you realize that the further you go, the more frenetic it gets, as with Nedeljkovic. Leipzig didn’t give the OK in time, as they needed to release him so he could return to Aston Villa and then join Fiorentina. Fiorentina and the English clubs had already done everything.”
That’s the Italian side of the story. Leipziger Volkszeitung have a different take on matters the newspaper reports that Leipzig had done everything to set up the transfer.
According to them, ‘everything was prepared’ for Nedeljkovic to end his loan and move to Germany. But the deal was cancelled because there was no agreement between Fiorentina and Aston Villa for the new loan. Thus, the move never happened.
That’s left Nedeljkovic in Leipzig until the summer, when he will presumably look for a new club once again. In the meantime, nobody wants the blame for the deadline day failure to move him to Florence.