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What’s the story?
Real Madrid are looking to sign a replacement for Karim Benzema and are constantly on the lookouts for an ideal striker. Call it fate or luck by chance, an opportunity just fell straight into the lap of Florentino Perez over dinner this week.
Torino's club president, Urbano Cairo, has revealed that he held talks with Perez for Andrea Belotti. "I was eating dinner with Real Madrid president Florentino Perez and we were talking about contracts of players with huge release clauses and I mentioned Belotti," said Cairo.
Perez, though, had no clue about the striker at all but his eyes lit up when he heard about the €100 million release clause. "As soon as he heard of the clause for Belotti, who he didn't know, it pricked his ears. If the clause had only been €20m, he wouldn't have been interested."
In case you didn’t know...
Belotti is considered as one of the best strikers in the world right now and the only reason he's still at Torino is his release clause. Several clubs were interested in signing him but the Serie A side refused to sell him for anything less than €100 million – his release clause.
The heart of the matter
Once Florentino Perez got to know about the striker, the Real Madrid president started talking about him and now the clubs are in talks to complete a deal.
Some reports suggest that Madrid will activate the release clause next summer and sign him up. Other reports suggest that the striker will be a part of a player-swap deal but the identity of the Madrid players is still unknown.
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Author’s Take
Chelsea and Manchester United were keen on signing him in the summer but their interest cooled after they were asked to pay €100 million for him. the Premier League odes went on to sign Alvaro Morata and Romelu Lukaku respectively but are said to be still interested in signing the Italian.
