Manchester United appear to be closing in on their first signing of the 2018 summer transfer window as speculation surrounding a move for Shakhtar Donetsk’s Fred continues to intensify.
Last week, reliable Italian football journalist Gianluca Di Marzio announced that we had agreed a €50 million (£44m) deal with the Ukrainian Premier League side for the central midfielder.
Today the Metro are reporting that Fred is looking to wrap up his move to Manchester United before the start of the World Cup next week.
And the 25-year-old has today touched down in England with the rest of the 23-man Brazil World Cup squad ahead of their pre-tournament friendly at Anfield next weekend.
Brazil face Croatia on Sunday 3 June in the first of two friendlies before their tournament in Russia begins next month.
Jose Mourinho is keen to sign two central midfielders this summer following the retirement of Michael Carrick and the impending departure of Marouane Fellaini. The two names that have popped up the most this summer have been Fred and Lazio’s Sergej Milinkovic-Savic.
The Metro goes on to stay that Fred’s agent, former-Arsenal midfielder Gilberto Silva, touched down in England a week ago to start discussions over his client moving to Old Trafford.
They go on to say that we will be looking to push a transfer through whilst Fred and the Brazilian national team are in England this week. In previous World Cup and European Championship years Jose Mourinho has got his business done early.
Fred is a box-to-box midfielder who is a good link between the defence and attack. The Brazilian likes to take the ball off the defensive players to start attacks and could be the missing ingredient in our midfield trio, to support Paul Pogba and Nemanja Matic.
The photo below is of Fred arriving in England in the early hours of this morning:
