The transfer buzz Wednesday centers around four Premier League powers and strikers with very different resumes.
One is creeping toward 30 years old and the other just hit 16.
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So will either Emre Tezgel or Mauro Icardi find their way to the PL before too long? Or is one too young and the other too long in the tooth to slide into English top-flight homes any time soon?
Emre Tezgel to Man City, Manchester United, Chelsea
You can’t risk letting the next big center forward heading to a rival, can you?
That seems to be the gist of a story claiming that Chelsea, Manchester United, and Chelsea are all hoping to beat each other to Stoke City phenom Emre Tezgel.
Barely 16 -- Sept. 19 birthday -- Tezgel is absolutely lighting it up at youth levels, with four goals in three caps for the England U-17s and seven goals in four appearances for the Stoke U-18s.
Plenty of players his age don’t hit the heights even when described as a “Harry Kane type,” but then again the report notes that Tezgel recently was given an honor previously won by Jude Bellingham.
Surely PL giants have noted what happens when players like Jadon Sancho and Jude Bellingham go abroad and take their reputations to lofty levels.
But Tezgel is still just finding his footing as a U-23, let alone on the verge of a senior debut for the Potters in the Football League Championship. One to keep an eye on, though.
Mauro Icardi to Tottenham
Surely this depends on Kylian Mbappe staying at PSG, Harry Kane leaving Spurs, and the player in question accepting a wage cut, but...
Mauro Icardi to Spurs?
Maybe.
The 28-year-old Argentine is said to be on his way out of Paris Saint-Germain and there’s a decent Argentine contingent at Spurs, where his current boss Mauricio Pochettino enjoys a solid reputation.
Icardi has three goals in 389 Ligue 1 minutes for PSG this season, but has made just one appearance of over 14 minutes since Lionel Messi came to town.
He scored 13 goals as a part time player last season and 20 in a more prominent role after moving to Paris from Inter Milan in 2019.
Icardi is not a prototypical Nuno Espirito Santo forward in stature and is also older than the Tottenham model but we’re here to bring you the rumors, not necessarily make sense of them.