Mercato Madness: Is Blerim Dzemaili moving to AC Milan or not?

For a few weeks now, there have been pretty consistent rumors linking Napoli midfielder Blerim Dzemaili with a move to AC Milan. The midfielder has long been figured to be on his way out of the San Paolo, and has been linked to a number of clubs all summer long.

The strongest link of late has been the one to Milan, who were believed to be negotiating a €3 million deal for the Swiss international. While that seems like a low fee for a player of Dzemaili's quality, the fact that he has only a year left on his contract means that Napoli don't have a ton of leverage to extract a higher price.

A deal seemed potentially close in recent days, with Dzei held out of the matchday squad last week against Athletic Bilbao and now not even traveling to Spain for the second leg. Now, however, Milan have distanced themselves from the potential transfer in a statement on their official TV channel, saying that they won't be going after Dzemaili.

Dzei is actually one of several players that Milan denied actual interest in, trying to kill speculation on a variety of recently rumored targets. In fact, the only player they didn't distance themselves from was Porto's Jackson Martinez, and it's believed that Milan and Porto are struggling to come anywhere near an agreement for the player in the wake of the departure of Mario Balotelli.

It'll be interesting to see how Milan replace Balo and plug the other holes in Pippo Inzaghi's side; they didn't get a particularly large fee for their former striker in this summer's insanely inflated market, though just getting his wages off the books will be of great value to the fallen giants. If Dzemaili won't be joining their midfield, who exactly will be?