Warning sign: European giants send scouts to watch Lucca | OneFootball

Another one of São Paulo’s youth academy prospects is expected to attract interest from European giants in the next transfer window.

AVANTE MEU TRICOLOR has learned that for about a month, scouts working for major Old Continent clubs have been following São Paulo’s under-20 matches to assess winger Lucca, an 18-year-old gem.

A player demanded in the squad by nine out of ten Morumbi club fans, Lucca was promoted to the senior team last year, but failed to establish himself regularly in the first team, whether due to the coach’s decision or injury.

Under Roger Machado, for example, the youngster was not even included in the matchday squad, overlooked on the bench in favor of defensive options (the new coach even named three defenders on the bench in some matches).

Not that the situation was any different under Hernán Crespo: in total, he played six matches this season, only three of them as a starter. He has not even appeared on the bench since the win over Ponte Preta in the last round of the Campeonato Paulista group stage.

Portuguese side Benfica, English club Arsenal, and German team Borussia Dortmund are among the clubs monitoring the São Paulo prospect.

The information was confirmed to the report by sources in São Paulo’s upper management, which is downplaying the matter and above all stressing that there have been no concrete offers for the prospect.

Lucca is under contract until April 2028, and the message is clear: the club has no interest in selling him before the end of this year. Better use in the senior team, combined with call-ups to Brazil’s youth national teams, indicates to the club’s directors that his market value could rise considerably.

Despite having a more secondary role than the one he holds today, football executive Rui Costa has been criticized for what is seen as the premature and disadvantageous sale of four São Paulo prospects last year: attacking midfielder Matheus Alves and wingers Lucas Ferreira, William Gomes, and Henrique do Carmo.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.