Napoli chairman Aurelio De Laurentiis has claimed that Chelsea are interested in signing star forward Edinson Cavani.
The Uruguayan is in demand as Manchester City and Real Madrid are also reportedly interested and De Laurentiis is probably trying to force one of the clubs to move with his comments.
Chelsea need a forward and even before Jose Mourinho was officially announced on Monday there were reports that Cavani was to be targeted at his request. Our current striker options Fernando Torres and Demba Ba simply aren’t good enough for a team that’s hoping to go on a title push whilst Romelu Lukaku will likely continue his development out on loan.
De Laurentiis told Radio Marte:
“Chelsea want Cavani. ‘Blues’ will call me in the next hours about it…
“If Edinson stays in Napoli I will be happy. If he goes, we’ll replace him using the €63 million [£53.5m] from his sale.”
(Goal.com)
He seems to be making it pretty clear that they are not willing to negotiate on price and if we’re to offer someone like Torres in part-exchange we’ll still have to shell out a fortune as the Spaniard’s valuation has dropped during his time at Stamford Bridge.
However, it’s roughly £3.5m more than we paid for Torres and if Cavani continues his scoring form, helps us win honours and is around for about the same length of time as Didier Drogba was then no-one will talk about his price-tag at the end of his career. Cavani has scored 104 goals in 138 appearances for Napoli, if he can replicate that in England then he’d definitely be worth it.
It’s a big price for the 26-year-old and that seems to be the reason that there’s doubts about going through with it, especially after getting burned for £50m-man Torres but he even looked like a busted flush months prior to his Liverpool departure and this was mistook at the time as many thought he was just disillusioned with life at Anfield.
It’s anyone’s guess if a Cavani purchase would work out well or not but if you don’t take risks, you don’t get rewards. If he was to go to City, who have already signed a couple of quality players and are going to recruit a competent manager in Manuel Pellegrini, it will make them a major threat and I’m not sure if we can afford that.
Source: Goal.com
