Newcastle United aren’t hanging around when it comes to hoovering up young talent in South America.
It was recently reported that the Magpies had won the race to sign 16-year-old Ecuadorian winger Johan Martinez, who will join the club when he turns 18.
Ross Wilson brought in his South American expert from Nottingham Forest shortly after coming to Newcastle and immediately sent him to work, and it’s paying dividends already, it seems.
Reports from Brazil claim that Newcastle are now frontrunners in the race to sign young Brazilian Eduardo Conceição from Palmeiras.
According to RTI Esporte in Brazil, Newcastle have already submitted an offer of £21.5 million for the 16-year-old left winger, who has yet to even make his first-team debut, but that has been knocked back by Palmeiras.
UOL also covered the story and added that it could take as much as £34 million to take the teenager away from the Brazilian Serie A league leaders.
Newcastle aren’t thought to be the only Premier League side keen on Conceição. Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Manchester City have all sent scouts to watch the youngster in action.
As with Martinez, if Newcastle are successful in signing Conceição, we would have to wait until he turns 18 before he can make the switch to England.
Are Newcastle crazy or clever?
It’s absolute insanity to think that Newcastle could have to pay £34 million for a 16-year-old. We know we’re trying to find future world-beaters, but that’s a huge gamble on such a young player.
He has five goals and three assists in 13 appearances for Palmeiras Under-20s this season already, so he’s obviously got something about him, but how many youngsters have we seen over the years with bags of promise who turned into bang average players?
However, this is the academy that brought through Endrick and Estevão, so they certainly know what they’re doing.
It feels like a huge gamble, but we’d be lying if we said we weren’t excited by the idea too.