Depending on who you believe, Simone Zaza is no longer Napoli’s top target to replace the injured Arkadiusz MIlik.
The first signs of this appeared in Corriere dello Sport on Tuesday when the Italian newspaper claimed that if they had their own way, the Serie A club would sign Newcastle’s Aleksandar Mitrovic.
The reason behind this is that it looks more and more likely that Napoli would have to deal with Juventus for any potential Zaza transfer, rather than West Ham, after the club’s director of football Cristiano Giuntoli made contact with the player’s entourage.
Beppe Marotta, Juventus’ CEO, is certainly not in the business of ‘making concessions’, according to Gazzetta, and a value of ‘beyond €15m’, plus a contract of minimum €3.5m/year on top of image rights means the deal gets far too expensive.
The pink Italian newspaper say these numbers are an extra motivation for Napoli to focus on Pavoletti instead, who might cost more transfer fee wise, but would demand far less contractually.
With a lot of the season left and only five games before Simone Zaza’s loan deal is made automatically permanent, things could get messy very quickly if West Ham and Slaven Bilic decide not to pay the £20m by leaving him out of the squad for the foreseeable future.
