Hot Football Transfer Gossip: Man Utd and Chelsea ‘chase 15-year-old’

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Today’s Hot Football Transfer Gossip is like walking into the nightclub you used to go to back in the day. Maybe it’s because we’re getting old, but everyone around just seems really young. Take Manchester United’s latest target Tahith Chong, for example. The Feyenoord winger, who is rated as one of the best young prospects in Holland, is currently in talks with the Red Devils, claims the Star. And he’s 15 years old. How can you expect a young footballer to keep his head screwed on if he hasn’t even done his Dutch GCSEs and he’s already in talks with Man Utd? Although maybe if you have a haircut as amazing as Chong’s (see above) you don’t need anything else to keep your head screwed on. Gravity does that job for you. The teenager can leave Feyenoord when he turns 16 in December, but Chelsea are also interested and “ready to thrash out a deal”, the Star says. Guess they could do with another player to send out on loan.

Another in-demand footballer who is still too young to get drunk is 17-year-old Danish “wonderkid” Armend Aslani, who the Mail says is in talks with Tottenham over a £345,000 move - a transfer fee that somehow fills us with a warm sense of nostalgia. It’s like the kind of fee people signed for in the old days. You can imagine Everton signing Chris Waddle for £345,000, or something like that. Lovely stuff. But back to the cut-throat world of modern football, and Spurs want to pay a pittance to Brondby, the club that nurtured Alsani, and take him thousands of miles away from home before he’s anywhere near ready to play for them. Stupid modern football.

Other youngsters interesting Premier League managers old enough to be their dads include Marko Rog, the 20-year-old Croatian midfielder who is reportedly wanted by Liverpool, and the slightly older Nabil Fekir, a 22-year-old Lyon striker who is allegedly on the radar of Louis van Gaal, despite having just been ruled out with for six months with ligament damage.

Finally, a transfer target who seems a veteran in comparison to the others is Bayern Munich’s 24-year-old midfielder Thiago Alcantara. You may remember the Spain international was on the verge of a move to Man Utd a couple of years ago, but now it’s Manchester City who apparently want him, with the Star saying Manuel Pellegrini is considering the midfielder as an alternative to Paul Pogba. Wise planning - he ain’t getting Pogba.

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