Football
Ben Gladwell, Italy correspondent 6y

Inter Milan and Jiangsu remove Walter Sabatini from sporting director duty

Walter Sabatini has been relieved of his duties as technical director of the Suning Group, the owners of Inter Milan, less than a year after he was hired.

The former Roma sporting director took on his role overseeing the transfer activities of Suning's two clubs Jiangsu and Inter last May, but a statement from the Chinese group on Wednesday confirmed the departure.

"Suning Sports and Sabatini have reached an agreement for the premature termination of our contract," read the statement published by La Gazzetta dello Sport. "Sabatini will no longer fulfil his role as technical director of Suning Sports. The club wishes him every success in his future employment."

On Tuesday, Sabatini had hinted that his spell with Suning was drawing to a conclusion.

"We're talking in a climate of total mutual comprehension, but Inter are Inter and it would have been nice to build something a little better," he said in an interview published on Inter's website. "I expect Inter to be Inter, as they have shown they can be, and fight to win to the very last game, which would be a consolation for an experience which has not been all that outstanding."

Disagreements over the Serie A club's transfer targets and Suning's apparent reluctance to invest large sums in new players are thought to be behind the separation, with Sabatini's hands largely tied by Financial Fair Play restrictions.

Inter coach Luciano Spalletti had given Sabatini and Suning a list of targets, including Paris Saint-Germain's Javier Pastore, but saw far less activity than he may have expected in both last summer's an the winter's transfer windows.

The Nerazzurri have won the race to sign highly-rated Argentinian forward Lautaro Martinez from the coming summer, though, with the player confirming the move earlier this week, while they look set to complete the free transfer signings of Stefan De Vrij from Lazio and Kwadwo Asamoah from Juventus.

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