Italian journalist rules out Man Utd January transfer

Manchester United are believed to still be interested in the services of Napoli centre-back Kalidou Koulibaly.

The 27-year-old is one of the best players in his position currently and was linked with a move to Old Trafford only last summer, but nothing materialised. We even had a £95 million offer turned down by last season’s Serie A runners-up.

Yesterday, bookmakers Paddy Power cut the odds of us landing the Senegalese international from 33/1 to 6/1 following a surge in bets.

However, any deal for Koulibaly may have to wait until the summer, claims Serie A expert, David Amoyal. The Italian football journalist told CalcioLand podcast:

“It started more than a year ago that centre-backs are becoming the sexy position on the transfer market. It used to be that goalscorers fetch the biggest transfer fee because in a lot of ways they might be the hardest position to find.

“But to get an elite centre-back is very, very difficult. We’ve seen the impact of [Virgil] van Dijk on Liverpool, the impact that great centre-backs have on teams and I think now there’s just so much more demand for them. So it’s really become a much sexier position and the transfer fees for centre-backs have really gone up a lot.

“So there are three in Serie A that are very sexy names and that’s Skriniar, Koulibaly and Romagnoli. In January I’d be absolutely shocked if any of these three move.

“Skriniar and Koulibaly are very happy where they are, I know there’s been a lot of buzz on them potentially leaving, because there teams are out of the Champions League and there’s no [title] race in Serie A, and Koulibaly has had the racist incidents to him but as far as I know there’s no buzz on them leaving.”

Any hopes of us signing a star centre-back in January are further cut short by not having a full-time manager in charge. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has led us to four wins from four since replacing Jose Mourinho, but any players considering a move to Manchester United could be put off by the managerial situation.

It is not know when Mourinho’s permanent predecessor will be announced. Of course, we are one of the biggest attractions in world football, but one has to admit that the likes of Barcelona, Juventus, Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal are all in a more stable position than us right now.

Kalidou Koulibaly could certainly be considering his future in Naples though. He has stayed there for five years without winning a league title nor European trophy. And it doesn’t look as though Juventus are going to surrender the Serie A title at any point in the near future either.