Following a month-long saga, Stefano Sensi will remain at Inter until the summer as a deal with Leicester City FC fell through on deadline day.
Stefano Sensi had been one of two senior Inter first-team players, after Lucien Agoumé, tipped to leave Inter during the 2024 January transfer window. Inter had been looking to sell Sensi on a permanent deal rather than lose the midfielder for free upon the expiration of his contract in June 2024 and Leicester City FC was the club most interested.
As early as January 9, 2024, SkySport Italy reported that Leicester was interested in Sensi. Negotiations started days later and Sensi had agreed to a 2-and-a-half-year contract with the Foxes, and the clubs reportedly agreed on a transfer fee of around €2M. The only issue was that Leicester had to make room in their squad for Sensi to comply with UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations.
On January 19, Chelsea re-called former Inter Primavera midfielder Cesare Casadei from his loan spell at Leicester. This seemingly opened a spot for Stefano Sensi in the squad, and Leicester was required to wait for word from the English Football Association to proceed with the deal.
Then, when everything seemed sorted and that a deal was ready to proceed, Nicolò Barella and Hakan Çalhanoğlu both picked up yellow card accumulation suspensions and were unavailable for selection to face Fiorentina in Serie A. Sensi’s move was postponed by a few days for the midfielder to be available on the bench for Inter- Sensi was an unused substitute as Inter beat Fiorentina 1-0.
Towards the final days of January, Inter and Leicester City were struggling to agree upon terms for a deal, whether Sensi would join on loan with the obligation to buy or on a permanent deal. Finally, it seemed a deal had been agreed during the late hours of January 31 and the 28-year-old was scheduled to travel to England on February 1, deadline day, to complete medicals ahead of a move to Leicester.
Deadline day was filled with seemingly identical updates throughout the day, with Inter and Leicester needing to finalize the last bureaucratic details before the deal can be completed. The word from England was that the two clubs were still figuring out the structure of the deal, while Italian sources apparently from those close to Sensi’s camp claimed that Leicester was still struggling to comply with FFP rules.
With less than ten minutes until the transfer window in England closed, it was revealed that Stefano Sensi’s move to Leicester City had collapsed and the midfielder would not be leaving Inter after all.
Stefano Sensi is set to return to Milan on Friday, February 2 and will remain available for selection by Simone Inzaghi until the end of the 2023/24 season. The midfielder will not have his contract extended and is destined to leave Inter on a free transfer in the summer.
