Why sell Zanetti?

Source : football-italia.net

Antonio Labbate questions how wise it was for Juventus to sell Cristiano Zanetti to Fiorentina

It doesn’t make sense. It just doesn’t. Why have Juventus, on the eve of a season when they do seem to be competitive enough to fight Inter for Lo Scudetto, sold Cristiano Zanetti to Fiorentina?
Granted, it’s not the biggest transfer shock of a summer which has seen Kaka, Cristiano Ronaldo and Zlatan Ibrahimovic move for ludicrous amounts of money, but Zanetti’s £1.5m switch to Tuscany is, in its own way, a major surprise.
More than that, it could turn out to be a potentially costly own goal by the Bianconeri officials who had spent most of July and August repairing the damage caused by their calcio mercato deficiencies over the past 36 months.
Granted, he did have less than a year left on his contract in Turin, but he was sold for such a measly figure that finances shouldn’t have been the deciding factor. And even if Zanetti left at his own request, surely Juve could have convinced him to offer his services for just another 12 months?
It’ll be up to the major players in the move [Zanetti himself and Juve sporting director Alessio Secco] to answers those questions, but the fact remains that La Signora are now missing a potentially vital element in their ranks. Although Zanetti’s fragile muscles mean that he isn’t physically up to the challenge of a whole season uninterrupted, he was unique to the Old Lady.
Zanetti was not just an ordinary midfielder for the Italian giants, he was their only playmaker, the man in their ranks who could organise and dictate the tempo of the whole side. The only deep-lying central midfielder with true vision and one of only a few in the squad who can pass a ball accurately over 40 metres.

His departure is all the more noteworthy given that Juventus opted against signing the more creative Gaetano D’Agostino recently by spending £20m plus on the Viola’s Felipe Melo. Possibly because they already had Zanetti at their disposal. Perhaps Martin Caceres, despite the assurances of Secco last week, won’t be the club’s last summer buy after all…