The Frenchman arrived in Serie B this year and is surprising everyone. He’ll remain in Emilia on loan

We don’t know about the current Inter squad, but the future one will feature at least one midfielder with the qualities sought by Cristian Chivu: a powerful, versatile attacking midfielder. Never mind that the player in question hasn’t even played a single minute in Serie A yet: Yanis Massolin was signed by Inter yesterday after just 13 appearances for Modena in Serie B. To beat out the competition and sign him immediately, the Nerazzurri paid a fixed fee of about 3.5 million, but with a bonus structure, the total could reach 6.

This 23-year-old with a thick, unruly head of hair arrived in Italy at the start of the season amid general uncertainty, but he quickly impressed everyone. “An alien for Serie B…,” is how his president at Modena, Carlo Rivetti, described him: he’ll remain in Emilia on loan until the end of the season, after which Massolin will test himself in a high-quality midfield—one in which no one else possesses his unique qualities. The Frenchman of Algerian descent (Yanis has yet to decide which national team he’ll play for) is 197 cm tall, but can play both as a central midfielder and an attacking midfielder