Both Chelsea and Manchester City appear primed to take advantage of any dawdling in the transfer market by Spanish giants, Barcelona.
The Catalan outfit already appear to have missed out on Claudio Echeverri, a River Plate ace who is a confirmed Barca support.
Fabrizio Romano, writing in his exclusive Daily Briefing for CaughtOffside suggested that City are well advanced with their negotiations for the Argentinian youngster.
It seems likely that they’ll do their upmost to beat the current La Liga champions to the signing of Estevao Willian too.
Known as ‘Messinho,’ the 16-year-old and his father both prefer a switch to Barcelona according to Mundo Deportivo, however, the €60m release clause in his Palmeiras contract is going to prove problematic it seems.
Given his age he wouldn’t be able to play in Europe until 2025 in any event, but his current club are keen to do a similar deal to that which they did with Endrick to Real Madrid, therefore knowing that the monies are banked and the player can stay with them until his 18th birthday.
It isn’t clear if Barcelona will be able to engineer a deal which would allow them to play on the fact that the player prefers to join them.
That would likely require the Catalans to sign some sort of undertaking that Palmeiras would get their money one way or the other in good time, and then it would be down to the Brazilian outfit as to whether they’re happy to be drip fed the cash or prefer it in one lump sum from either City or Chelsea, whom Mundo Deportivo also credit with an interest.