Lazio 'make contact' with Sunderland as £20m-rated man eyed as Mason Greenwood alternative
The £20million-rated Sunderland youngster is attracting interest from Europe this summer
Italian club Lazio have reportedly “made contact” with Sunderland over a potential transfer deal.
The Serie A outfit posted several bids for Black Cats star Jack Clarke during last January’s winter transfer window but saw their attempts knocked back by the Wearsiders on deadline day. However, fresh reports have claimed Lazio are now interested in Jobe Bellingham.
Lazio have been heavily linked with Manchester United outcast Mason Greenwood but are said to be unwilling to match the Premier League club’s demands after his loan spell at Spanish club Getafe last season. Several Italian outlets report that Lazio have turned their attention towards Jobe as an alternative.
The 18-year-old has interest from clubs in top tiers across Europe, with Crystal Palace making the strongest push for his signature so far this summer. Palace have a strong record of signing top talent from the EFL with the club tracking Jobe’s debut campaign closely.
Sunderland rejected initial moves from Palace this summer with Jobe under contract for another three years, meaning they were always fairly confident they could keep him in the current window. Seven days ago, transfer insider Fabrizio Romano reported the player himself had decided he is keen to stay for at least one more season.
Sporting director Kristjaan Speakman said earlier this month that he could not guarantee there would be no significant departures this summer but made clear that there was no need to sell any player.
While the market is volatile and things can change quickly, it looks for now highly likely that Bellingham will stay in an early boost to new head coach Régis Le Bris as he plans ahead for the new campaign despite the strong links to both Crystal Palace and Lazio
“I think it's really difficult to predict what will happen through the summer,” Speakman during a recent interview. “I think all I can say on the player retention piece is that we've had a really strong record on that.
Obviously, fantastic news with young Chris [Rigg] signing this week, I think that endorses and echoes everything we've been saying previously, we'll just take every piece of interest or every discussion that happens along the way for what it is at that point in time, which is really, really difficult to predict.
“I appreciate from a supporter's perspective, you want some certainty. I think the danger with the transfer window is it's always an uncertain period, but our intent and our objective has always been to retain our talent.
“As I've said before, I'd much rather get loads of interest on our talented players than be struggling to name talented players in our group,” he added. “So, I don't want to go into the individual ins and outs because those things always can chop and change. But as I said, I can reiterate our strategy and our intent is to retain our top talent.”