Pisa's option to purchase Ebenezer Akinsanmiro has collapsed for a second time, with Inter now repositioning the 21-year-old midfielder as a transfer asset at a valuation that has climbed beyond the original €7.5 million figure that already proved too steep for the Tuscan club.
The significance is straightforward: Akinsanmiro is no longer a Pisa player in any practical sense, and Inter are now openly framing him as a source of profit rather than a squad piece. The Nerazzurri's summer is being built around generating transfer income — they have reportedly tabled €45 million plus €5 million in bonuses for a separate target — and Akinsanmiro fits that commercial logic precisely. His value has risen despite Pisa's refusal to exercise the option, which tells you something about how Inter's hierarchy reads the market for young midfielders.
The numbers from his season at Pisa do not make the case for immediate top-flight deployment. Across 23 Serie A appearances, Akinsanmiro registered one assist and no goals, carrying an average match rating of 6.80. An AI overall score of 59 out of 100, with a projected ceiling of 72, suggests a player whose best football remains ahead of him — a profile that suits a selling club's narrative more than a buying club's immediate needs. Pisa, who finished the 2025-26 season bottom of the table with 18 points from 37 matches — two wins, twelve draws, twenty-three defeats — were never going to be the environment in which Akinsanmiro's ceiling was tested.
The club's direction has also shifted. Paolo Bianco, freshly promoted from Monza, has been appointed Pisa head coach on a two-year contract as the club prepares for Serie B. Oscar Hiljemark's tenure is over. Bianco's arrival is a rebuild, not a refinement, and a midfielder with Akinsanmiro's profile — owned by Inter, priced above what a second-division club can justify — was never going to feature in those plans.
Inter now hold the cards. The question is which club, and at what price, will take them.