Manchester United youth coach Paul McGuiness has been blown away by the quality of controversial young Italian signing Davide Petrucci.
Support striker Petrucci is rated as one of the best young talents of his generation, and he has been labelled by some as the “new Francesco Totti”.
However as he was still under age, Petrucci had not signed a professional contract with Roma, and Man Utd nipped in a few months ago to poach the 16-year-old prodigy for a miserly £200,000, offering him £95,000 per year, plus all expenses paid for him to fly home to Italy on a regular basis.
This transfer infuriated the Calcio community, who ganged up on Man Utd for stealing the youngster off Roma.
The Premiership side have remained completely silent over the controversy, but they are absolutely delighted with their new recruit.
"Davide is an all-round midfield player," Under-18s boss Paul McGuinness told manutd.com.
"He does a bit of everything; he can win the ball, distribute it well, a good range of creative passing and he has a hell of a shot on him.
"He likes to shoot as well and he has the potential to score plenty of goals from midfield, either with a long range shot or bursting into the box to score with his feet or from a header."
English clubs have long been criticised by foreign clubs for stealing under-age players, many of these coming from Italy. Reggina’s 15-year-old Vincenzo Camilleri was snapped up by Chelsea in February, Atalanta’s teenage talent Fabio Zamblera by Newcastle Utd, while a few years back Parma-duo Giuseppe Rossi and Arturo Lupoli were signed by Man Utd and Arsenal respectively.
This led Palermo’s outspoken President Maurizio Zamparini to famously brand English teams as “pirates”.
Support striker Petrucci is rated as one of the best young talents of his generation, and he has been labelled by some as the “new Francesco Totti”.
However as he was still under age, Petrucci had not signed a professional contract with Roma, and Man Utd nipped in a few months ago to poach the 16-year-old prodigy for a miserly £200,000, offering him £95,000 per year, plus all expenses paid for him to fly home to Italy on a regular basis.
This transfer infuriated the Calcio community, who ganged up on Man Utd for stealing the youngster off Roma.
The Premiership side have remained completely silent over the controversy, but they are absolutely delighted with their new recruit.
"Davide is an all-round midfield player," Under-18s boss Paul McGuinness told manutd.com.
"He does a bit of everything; he can win the ball, distribute it well, a good range of creative passing and he has a hell of a shot on him.
"He likes to shoot as well and he has the potential to score plenty of goals from midfield, either with a long range shot or bursting into the box to score with his feet or from a header."
English clubs have long been criticised by foreign clubs for stealing under-age players, many of these coming from Italy. Reggina’s 15-year-old Vincenzo Camilleri was snapped up by Chelsea in February, Atalanta’s teenage talent Fabio Zamblera by Newcastle Utd, while a few years back Parma-duo Giuseppe Rossi and Arturo Lupoli were signed by Man Utd and Arsenal respectively.
This led Palermo’s outspoken President Maurizio Zamparini to famously brand English teams as “pirates”.