Media fabricates Marek Hamsik departure rumors

There's a budding transfer drama building up in Italy, with talk of a number of big clubs circling a big-name player. Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea, Atletico Madrid, and Borussia Dortmund are all eager to add this guy to their ranks, an icon at his current team.

The team is Napoli. The player is Marek Hamsik. And the rumors are pure bullshit.

We've seen variants of this every summer for several years now. Media and agents eager to unsettle Hamsik and get him to a bigger club try to spread discord and dissent and magically massive offers. It's the same again now, and it's just as far-fetched and made-up as it's ever been.

This time around, it stems from a rather vague quote from an interview Hamsik gave right after Slovakia was eliminated from Euro 2016. When asked about his Napoli future and if he would extend his contract, Hamsik told reporters that he was going on vacation first to recover from the Euros and that he would worry about his future later.

That's hardly a controversial thing to say -- Hamsik was tired and emotionally drained from losing to Germany, and wanted to rest before worrying about anything else. It's something a lot of footballers say in his shoes say, and most times everyone goes "yeah, OK, that makes sense, talk to you in a couple of weeks."

Not Hamsik. Instead, "Hamsik wants out of Napoli!" stories immediately sprung up, and rumors came out of the woodowork of big clubs wanting him. There's just one problem, though: there's no apparent truth in any of the stories.

Every story has completely ignored that Hamsik has said over and over that he's in love with the city, in love with its people, and that Naples is, now and forever, his home, and that he never wants to leave. Hamsik also said in a recent interview the team posted that he's thrilled to be ready to play his 10th season with the club, and that his relationship with Aurelio De Laurentiis has never been better.

Does that sounds like something a player who wants to leave would say? Does that sound like someone who's agitating for a move to a bigger team?

Short answer: no. Long answer: hell no, and go away.

Marek Hamsik is ours, and you can't have him, no matter how badly you want him to go somewhere else and what BS stories you tell to try to make that happen.