Paris Saint-Germain’s sporting director is likely going to put all his eggs in the Sergej Milinković-Savić basket. The Serbian international is ready to leave Lazio and take on a new challenge and Leonardo is more than willing to bring him to the French capital.
As a result, the Italian club is looking for €80 million to part ways with the 25-year-old. If Milinković-Savić were to make the transition from Serie A to Ligue 1, it would eat up a lot of PSG’s transfer budget, which means Leonardo will have to cut corners elsewhere to fill additional holes in the squad.
With that in mind, French media outlet L’Équipe is reporting that the capital club will look within the country for potential reinforcements. The French market is relatively cheaper than the Premier League, for example, where player values are often bloated due to the media attention and broadcasting revenue pumped into the English game.
Signing players trained in France also helps with a UEFA Champions League rule that stipulates that a club can register 25 players but eight of those have to be “trained locally.” Essentially, four players have to have come up through the PSG ranks and four others can be from other French clubs as long as they’ve been in the country for three seasons between 15 and 21 years old.
Currently, PSG has three players that were trained at the club (Presnel Kimpembe, Colin Dagba, and Kylian Mbappé) and three in France (Abdou Diallo, Layvin Kurzawa, and Idrissa Gueye). The penalty for not meeting the quota is a reduction in the number of players a team can register for the Champions League.
In his first stint with the Ligue 1 champions, Leonardo did purchase fan-favorite Blaise Matuidi from AS Saint-Étienne in 2011. There are times where the Brazilian looks for talent that’s not only in Italy (it just doesn’t happen that often!). Furthermore, it will be interesting to see if the club looks to bring a few players from their youth system into the first team. Xavi Simons potentially?
We know that Milinković-Savić won’t come cheap and that in addition to a midfielder, PSG needs to sign a right-back and potentially a backup striker and center-back. With so many needs, PSG will need to find a way to stretch their finances and the French transfer market could be the solution.
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