Half of Europe, including Chelsea after Lazio’s €100m rated ‘New Pogba’ — report

Sergej Milinkovic-Savic entered the public footballing consciousness back in 2015 when Serbia won a rather unlikely U20 World Cup trophy, kicking off mass celebrations back in Belgrade and launching the future careers of several youngsters. In fact, Milinkovic-Savic is at least the third player from that squad to become hot topic in the rumor mill, joining Marko “new Matic” Grujic (now warming the bench at Liverpool) and Andrija “new Messi” Zivkovic (now warming the bench at Benfica) as supposed targets for Europe’s best and most ambitious. In case you’re wondering, Milinkovic-Savic is the “new Pogba”.

As per Gazzetta dello Sport, the fee required to take the 22-year-old from Lazio would also be very much Pogba-esque (i.e. €100 million), which automatically restricts potential suitors to the usual collection of the richest teams around. Chelsea are supposedly there, as are Manchester City, Juventus, and AS Monaco, though Manchester United have been linked the most often so far — incidentally, United had Sergej’s younger brother Vanja, a giant of a goalkeeper, on the books for a while before releasing him.

Milinkovic-Savic has been a regular at Lazio for the past 2.5 seasons and certainly looks ready for bigger and better things. But spending €100 million on him would be a pretty silly move considering the similar recent success a very similar player called Ruben Loftus-Cheek has been having at Crystal Palace. That’s money better spent elsewhere, both in terms of usefulness (need help at left wing-back and replacements for older players first) and just principle (to reap the rewards of our own Academy)