At the beginning of July, Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp told Mario Balotelli that he was free to leave the club.
Nearly two months on - and with seven days remaining of the transfer window - Balotelli's future remains shrouded in mystery.
This week it was Sassuolo, the Italian Serie A club, that turned him down. For a player who is still only 26 and one Roberto Mancini once claimed could reach the heights of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, it has been a humbling and alarming decline.
Quite simply, Sassuolo, an improving club with a strong team spirit that finished 17th, 12th and 6th in the last three seasons, concluded that Balotelli was not worth the gamble.