Arsenal and Liverpool were among the clubs to have an official in attendance as Porto beat SC Braga 1-0 on Saturday evening. The presence of the Premier League clubs is covered by Portuguese newspaper A Bola, who say the ‘colossal’ sides of English football will have been watching Andre Silva.
This has been the case for months now. Andre Silva is the new darling of Portuguese football, or at least one of them, and therefore if a big English club send an official to watch Porto, the country’s media insist he’s the target and everything snowballs further.
Silva, naturally, has the big release clause that comes with being a Portuguese wonderkid, his is €60m. Arsenal have been the most linked English club and for a time they were attending every Porto match they could, although in recent weeks that hasn’t been the case.
Represented by Jorge Mendes’ Gestifute, Arsenal signing Silva would be eyebrow raising given Arsene Wenger isn’t thought to be fond of working with the agent. However, Wenger has put it on record himself that he wouldn’t be put off signing a target just because of Mendes.
Liverpool interest would represent a new strand to the story, and in our opinion A Bola are wrong and Jurgen Klopp’s men will have been watching someone else, or watching generally. That could be the case for Arsenal too, and the Andre Silva choice may have been a red herring all along.
Anyway, the officials from both clubs will have got a nice surprise on Saturday as a young man made his debut and stole the show. Striker Rui Pedro scored the only goal of the game and was named Man of the Match.
At just 18 years of age he finds himself plastered all over the Portuguese media and Andre Silva, getting on a bit at 21, may well have a heir sooner than he’d have hoped.
Andre Silva’s purple patch of October is now long behind him and O Jogo awarding Rui Pedro 8/10 and his teammate 4/10 shows who the man of the moment is. The youngster’s release clause is €30m.
