Newcastle United are one of the clubs interested in highly-rated Argentinian youngster Julian Alvarez, who is available for €20m in January.
That’s according to journalist Nicolo Ceccarini on Tuttomercatoweb, who puts Newcastle among a host of clubs vying for Alvarez’s signature.
The young striker is one of the rising stars of Argentinian football, with four goals and seven assists in 24 games in all competitions this season, seeing him pick up plenty of admirers.
That, plus his tally of 33 goals and 24 assists in 93 games for River Plate, all by the age of 21, means he is highly rated, and a host of clubs are lining up trying to secure his signature.
That’s because his contract with the Argentine club expires in December next year, meaning they could be forced to sell sooner rather than later to avoid losing him on the cheap.
Ceccarini covers that today and states that with observers all over Europe following his growth, the situation is quickly reaching a ‘decisive moment’.
River want to keep the striker and are ready to offer him a new deal with a substantial wage increase, but there are ‘many sirens’, particularly from Italy, Spain and England. The list of suitors is long, and Newcastle are one of the clubs who are in the mix.
Alvarez has a release clause of €20m, which is seen as an ‘affordable amount’ by everyone involved and ‘something could happen’ in January.
His agent is set to meet River Plate’s management to ‘take stock’ of the situation and see what their next steps are but ‘everything is evolving’ and Alvarez is destined to become one of the hottest names in the January transfer window.
Whether Newcastle can beat firm competition to his signature remains to be seen.
