Manchester City are in superior talks with Lille over a transfer for Morocco midfielder Ayyoub Bouaddi.
The Premier League aspect need to conclude the switch this week after agreeing to sell Rodri to Barcelona.
It’s understood Lille worth the 18-year-old at 100 million euros (£85.6m).
Bouaddi impressed at this summer season’s World Cup – beginning all of Morocco’s 5 matches of their run to the final 16 – after a starring position in Lille’s Champions League victory over Actual Madrid in 2024 introduced him on the massive stage.
He capabilities as a deep-lying conductor – a lot in the identical vein as Rodri – and would complement summer season signing Elliot Anderson, who’s extra of a box-to-box midfielder.
Bouaddi has performed 88 instances for Lille since making his debut in October 2023, three days after his sixteenth birthday, and helped them end third in Ligue 1 final season.
Spain captain Rodri is ready to finish a £65m transfer to Barcelona within the coming days on a four-year contract.
The 2024 Ballon d’Or winner has made 298 appearances throughout seven trophy-laden seasons at Metropolis after becoming a member of from Atletico Madrid in 2019 for a then membership file £62.8m.
The 30-year-old missed a lot of the 2024-25 marketing campaign with a critical knee damage, and elements of final season have been disrupted by a hamstring difficulty.
Nonetheless, he was again to his greatest on the World Cup in the summertime, main Spain to their second title and being named participant of the event.
It stays to be seen how a profitable transfer for Bouaddi would influence Metropolis’s curiosity in Chelsea‘s Enzo Fernandez, however well-placed sources preserve that Metropolis supervisor Enzo Maresca retains a robust curiosity within the Argentina midfielder.
