Perhaps understandably, given the recent form of their top scorer, a host of top clubs from across Europe are sending representatives to Leicester as they seek attacking reinforcements. Less expectedly the man Milan, Internazionale, Juventus and Bologna are all interested in is Andrej Kramaric, who has played 12 minutes of top-flight football this season and has been named in the Foxes’ matchday squad for just one of their last seven league games (though to be fair he did score against Bury in the Capital One Cup).
Not that Jamie Vardy’s achievements have gone entirely unnoticed. Indeed, British screenwriter Adrian Butchart – the man who wrote the first two Goal! films – is currently in Hollywood pitching Vardy – The Movie! “It’s amazing to think he was playing non-league football and making medical splints for a living until so recently,” he says. “It’s the kind of role actors dream of.” The Sun, whose exclusive this tale is, reports that “Robert Pattinson, Andrew Garfield and Zac Efron are candidates to fill Vardy’s boots” in the dramatisation of his rise to sporting prominence.
Basel’s Breel Embolo has got Europe’s biggest club sides all excited, with Barcelona joining Manchester United, Juventus and Arsenal in the hunt for the 18-year-old. United had scouts in Basel last week to watch their game against Fiorentina, where they were able to size up both Embolo and the Florence-based former West Brom midfielder Borja Valero, who turns 31 in January and is also wanted by Southampton.
Sunderland are keeping tabs on £7m Olympiakos left-back Arthur Masuaku, with their Greek scout thus able to hang out with his counterparts from Juventus, Internazionale and Roma, who are also eyeing the Frenchman. Also sniffing around a foreign full-back are West Ham, who want Milan’s Danilo d’Ambrosio. Meanwhile Stoke “could” want Werder Bremen’s Nigeria striker Anthony Ujah, say the Mirror, not entirely confidently.
Talking of multi-scout pile-ups, the 18-year-old Genoa midfielder Rolando Mandragora has created one of his own, with Inter, Juventus, Milan, Roma, Chelsea and West Ham all monitoring his performances, though the player himself fancies a move to Milan. “Playing at San Siro, it’s something special,” he trilled. “I still need to work a lot and my agent is the one in charge of transfers and negotiations.” One man who could be leaving Chelsea for Italy, meanwhile, is Papy Djilobodji, the £3m summer defensive reinforcement who has since been seen by hardly Anybodji and is now a January loan target for Lazio.
Celta Vigo’s free-scoring forward Nolito has caught the eye of Arsène Wenger, who has dispatched scouts to Spain even though the 29-year-old goal-grabber would prefer to play for Barcelona, all things being equal. That’s fine, though, because Arsenal would prefer to sign Inter’s Mauro Icardi, all things being equal, even if the 22-year-old Nerazzuri captain would cost £35m. Talking of Barcelona – as we so recently were – and transfers that almost certainly won’t happen – which we never do – apparently the Catalan giants habitually insert buy-back clauses into any deal to sell one of their young talents, but pointedly refused to do so when pocketing £7m from Aston Villa for Adama Traoré, so he can stop with those daydreams already.