Emanuele Giaccherini is being tracked by a number of clubs, including Bologna of Italy, according to his agent after the midfielder was left out of Sunderland's Saturday squad for the home defeat to Norwich City, despite being fully fit.
A rethink is needed
Speaking to the Sunderland Echo, his agent Furio Valcareggi admitted that he and Giaccherini have had to 'rethink the situation created in England.' This was after a fully fit Giaccherini was nowhere to be seen on Saturday. The Italian, who has suffered a number of injuries since his £6.5million move to Wearside in the summer of 2013, has yet to show his full ability to the Sunderland faithful.
Now it looks like he may never do, as it appears that he isn't part of Dick Advocaat's plans for the season ahead, that is despite two widely panned performances by the team that see them already at the foot of the table.
National desires
Giaccherini still harbours ambitions to make the Italian squad for the 2016 European Championships, having been left out of the 2014 World Cup squad, and Valcareggi has admitted that sitting around in the North East will only damage his chances. The agent said that Giaccherini "lost all of last year and now cannot afford to lose another chance" to get into the Italian squad as "this is the year leading up to Euro 2016 and he really wants to be there."
But for Giaccherini, who only started four games in all competitions for the Black Cats last season and only two of which were in the Premier League, if he was to leave now it would be hard to look back on his Sunderland career as anything other than a failure.
Having been signed by Paolo Di Canio, much was expected of the former Juventus player, and he was excited for the challenge, saying that he has "always been a big fan of English football," football he described as "spectacular" when he arrived in the country.
He stated his desire was to "be a regular starter," something he didn't have the change to do at Juventus "because there were a lot of important players in front of [him]."
And even as recently as June, he had looked on the coming season with ambition and positivity, welcoming the competition for places as he sought to make the playmaker role his own. But, as Sunderland continue to struggle and Giaccherini continues to be frozen out, his ambition may have to be fostered elsewhere.
His agent has insisted has insisted that he could decide his future in as little as two days, and with less than two weeks of the transfer window remaining, it would leave Sunderland in a desperate rush to find a replacement.