Manchester United are ready to pay over €60 million to prise highly-rated Nicolò Zaniolo away from Roma.
The young midfielder has burst onto the scene in the last year with a series of impressive performances for the Serie A club.
He has, predictably, caught the eye of Europe’s elite sides and Manchester United are one who have consistently been named as a team showing interest.
That interest is growing, according to Il Messaggero, who say Zaniolo has ‘bewitched’ the world of football.
They claim that elite clubs in Europe are ready ‘go crazy’ to sign the 20-year-old and Manchester United are at the front of the queue.
That’s the kind of money that Roma would be unable to turn down, and nobody at the club ‘deludes’ themselves that their prize asset will remain there for the rest of his career like their last big star Francesco Totti.
Convincing Zaniolo to make the move may be difficult as he loves the club but the newspaper suggests Manchester United would also be offering €10m a year in wages, and that would be ‘complicated’ for the youngster to turn down.
For now, he’s concentrating on Roma and Euro 2020 next summer, but it seems the chances of a big-money bid from arriving from somewhere, perhaps Old Trafford, is now a case of when rather than if.
