Newcastle United are said to be one of a host of clubs keeping tabs on teenage sensation Pedrinho of Corinthians after he made his full debut at the weekend.
Pedrinho, aka, Pedro, signed for Corinthians at the age of nine and represented their futsal team before signing his first professional contract in March last year, eventually making his first-team debut at the weekend.
Now GOAL in Brazil claim that several clubs around Europe are poised to make a bid for the left-sided forward in the Summer. GOAL claims that Newcastle will face competition from the likes of Ajax, PSV Borussia Dortmund, Brighton and Zenit St Petersburg.
Corinthians are looking to make history if Pedrinho is sold
Pedrinho is tied up in a contract until 2025 and the Brazilian club have inserted a hefty release clause in his contract that they hope will result in their record transfer if activated. It will take a bid of £44.5million to take Pedrinho away from Corinthians, which is a substantial fee for a 17-year-old with such little experience.
That being said, he seems to know where the goal is, having netted twice and providing two assists in eight appearances as he helped the Brazilian youth team win the recent South American Under-20’s Championship.
Newcastle, under the guidance of Dan Ashworth, are looking to build a strong youth squad so that as time goes on the players they need are already at hand and know how to play the ‘Newcastle way’, whatever that may end up being. To that end, there’s a great focus on finding exceptional young talent and bringing them to Tyneside as soon as possible.
Whether the club would be willing to spend as much on a 17-year-old with no experience as they paid for Anthony Gordon is doubtful, but that is just a release clause, there’s still scope for negotiation. If Pedrinho is as good the attention on him suggests, then he could be worth paying that bit extra for in order to secure him for the long-term future of the club.
One to keep an eye on
If players like Pedrinho, Garang Kuol and Harrison Ashby go on to fulfil their potential at Newcastle that could potentially save us hundreds of millions of pounds down the line as we wouldn’t need to go out and buy expensive players in order to compete as we’d already have them trained and ready to go.
Not to be confused with his 24-year-old namesake who is on loan at Atlético Mineiro from Shakhtar Donetsk, Pedrinho is a name worth keeping an eye on.
Receive a digest of our best Newcastle content each week direct to your mailbox
