AC Milan said to be interested in Dejan Kulusevski

According to a report from Italian publication JuveLive, giants AC Milan are very interested in signing Spurs star Dejan Kulusevski.

The 24-year old has been a revelation this season, being deployed in a deeper midfield role, playing as the right sided number eight in Ange Postecoglu’s new 433 set up that he has been using for the vast majority of this season so far.

Kulusevski spent three years of his senior career in Serie A, first at Atalanta, then Parma, and then Juventus – before Antonio Conte took both him and Rodrigo Bentancur out of Turin and into North London in January of 2022. The former Spurs manager was said to be interested in Kulusevski’s services back in the summer, before his stock began to quickly rise in North London.

Milan have several former Premier League players in their current squad, including Fikayo Tomori, Christian Pulisic, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Alvaro Morata, and of course, who could possibly forget – Emerson Royal.

The report says that Milan are ready to offer €50m (£41.6m), and that the interest is coming from club advisor Zlatan Ibrahmovic, who played with the Spurs man for the Sweden national team, and is said to be “obsessed” with him.

There are two things that do not marry up, however. First of all, the report suggests he could be a “replacement” for Rafael Leao, should the Portuguese winger leave the club in the winter transfer window. You could find a goalkeeper and a striker with more in common in terms of profile and style of play than Leao and Kulusevski.

Perhaps it is a mistranslation, and they mean replacement with the money they would receive for Leao. Still, you would have thought that money would go on someone of a much similar profile, rather than Kulusevski.

Second of all, and more prominently – Daniel Levy might not even see a reply to that sort of money as necessary. He would probably laugh. That sort of money is just nowhere near what the club would accept. With Kulusevski having a contract until 2028, there is no pressure to sell at all.

With such a unique profile as his, it would be seriously hard to replace his services. Spurs would want a lot more money than that to try and do so. That too, and if Milan have sold Leao beforehand, the club will know they have plenty of money to work with, and won’t accept any sort of penny pinching.