Plenty of eyebrows were raised in both England and Italy when Napoli swooped in for out of favour Manchester United Academy graduate Scott McTominay back in the summer of 2024, but their decision to sanction a £25.7 million transfer fee for the Scottish internationals services proved to be genius.
The 28 year old, 61 capped Scot, was a one club man after joining the Old Trafford outfit aged just 5 years old, and he went on to make well over 150 starting appearances for them, with almost 100 more showings as a substitute down the years, but with only 29 goals to his name, that was a poor return.
This clearly changed when manager Antonio Conte got his hands on him and gave him greater license to get forward. Following his arrival at Napoli, his first season saw 33 starting appearances, with three substitute showings, yet a fantastic return of 13 goals that turned him into a Serie A leading midfielder that led to plenty of end of season accolade.
As Napoli now prepare for life in the 2025/26 campaign as reigning 2024/25 Serie A champions, they are already being linked with some very high profile moves and PL and Belgium legend Kevin De Bruyne has already signed on the line with them, whilst fellow City colleague Jack Grealish is also the subject of very heavy links, but naturally rumours also contain departures and rather bizarrely McTominay has now become one of them.
This is despite every obvious reason that Napoli would never have an intention to sell on their talisman given the opening 12 months of success he has helped bring to them, unless it was for an absolutely astronomical fee and that is now what is being suggested.
Naturally it involves Saudi Arabian Pro League side Al-Hilal, as one of the countries backed giants, they have already spent big in recent transfer windows since they decided to massively boost their own footballing profile into the high leagues, and some of their previous captures have been Joao Cancelo, Kalidou Koulibaly, Ruben Neves, Matheus Pereira and even Neymar.
It is fully understandable as to why they would be interested in him, but whether you are a Napoli fan or not, there cannot be many fans out there who would understand why a player on such an upward curve would move to what the vast majority feel is a high spending retirement league.
Every summer there are nonsensical transfer rumours and this one falls squarely into that category as whilst this may have originally played well for some outlets, quite frankly their ‘shocking headlines’ will only further degrade the trust fans had in them as reputable outlets.
