Udinese President Giampaolo Pozzo admits some of his stars could leave, “but we rejected a €35m offer for Alexis Sanchez.”
The Friulani finished fourth and enter the Champions League preliminary round for only the second time in their history.
“After 25 years of football I am celebrating this preliminary round entry, which for a provincial side is an extraordinary achievement.
Udinese President Giampaolo Pozzo admits some of his stars could leave, “but we rejected a €35m offer for Alexis Sanchez.”
The Friulani finished fourth and enter the Champions League preliminary round for only the second time in their history.
“After 25 years of football I am celebrating this preliminary round entry, which for a provincial side is an extraordinary achievement.
“Don't forget that we started with four straight defeats and were still bottom of the table in Week 6, mainly because we had so many players strained from the World Cup.
“We also had a slight setback at one point with bans, injuries and refereeing errors coming together, as otherwise we could've done even better.
“Now I am happy that we have achieved this objective, fighting tooth and claw, and will see what happens next.
“We will try to keep hold of all the players we can. Of course there are some who have offers from very big clubs, so it will be impossible to keep them all, but we are ambitious and will aim to hold on to most of them.
“We always manage to find suitable replacements and that is our job in football. If we didn't balance the books after 25 years then we'd be starving!
“It's going to be tough, but we want to keep the young players, as they will have other chances and need time to grow. I hope they all want to continue this great adventure, if we manage to get past the preliminary round, of the Champions League with Udinese.”
Among the hottest properties on the transfer market are Sanchez and Gokhan Inler.
“Napoli have been pressuring us for Inler for some time now, but we want at least 48 hours to celebrate before talking about such matters,” confirmed Pozzo.
“As far as I am concerned, Sanchez is worth as much as Leo Messi, but admittedly I'm not objective. He's one of only two or three players born in every generation.
“We have received an offer of €35m that we rejected. I do not want to name the club, out of respect. Sanchez is very young and we'd like him to stay for another year, plus we believe he's worth more than €35m.”
There are several clubs targeting El Nino Maravilla, including Manchester City, Inter, Juventus and Barcelona.