Man Utd ready €150m ‘offer that cannot be refused’ to beat Chelsea to top Ten Hag target
Manchester United are reportedly readying an ‘offer that cannot be refused’ for top striker target Victor Osimhen.
The Nigeria international – who moved to Napoli from Lille for £70m in 2020 – has been on fire this season for the runaway Serie A leaders – scoring 25 goals in 29 games in all competitions.
And that form has predictably caught the eye of Premier League clubs; namely Chelsea and United.
As picked up by Sport Witness, Il Mattino wrote colourfully about Osimhen’s future on Tuesday, likening him to Ulysses as ‘he wants to listen to the song of the sirens’.
That suggests Osimhen would be open to a move away from Naples and the report adds that he has ‘been in the notebook of Manchester United managers for a while’ and that those talking to the 24-year-old ‘make him feel important’.
United ‘would be really ready to put on Napoli’s table what Don Vito Corleone would have called an offer that cannot be refused’, which the report claims would have to be ‘€150m, no less’.
Owner Aurelio De Laurentiis ‘wouldn’t even sit down in a chair to start talking’ for anything less than that amount.
Napoli are now in a position, thanks to their deep run in the Champions League and past sales, where they don’t need to sell Osimhen, meaning United will ‘have to show up at Castel Volturno with a mountain of money’.
Journalist Ben Jacobs told TEAMtalk last week that Chelsea and United are both in the running to sign Osimhen, as well as fellow Serie A striker Dusan Vlahovic.
“Manchester United, first and foremost, are still seriously looking at Victor Osimhen, and it’ll be intriguing to see whether knowing that his dream is the Premier League, Napoli can hang on to him,” Jacobs said.
“Chelsea will also be in the race for Osimhen as well as Dusan Vlahovic, which is another possibility for Manchester United.
“There’s a real opportunity to sign him [Vlahovic] from Juventus as well over the course of the summer because the player has an appetite now to leave and try the Premier League. And of course, before he moved to Juventus from Fiorentina there were strong links and concrete attempts by Arsenal to try and sign Vlahovic.
“So the Premier League has always been an option and Manchester United and Chelsea will be in that conversation as well.”