Juventus are likely to counter Real Madrid’s attempts to make Paul Pogba the world’s most expensive player by offering him a contract extension until 2021 and boosting his wages from €5m a year to €7m (£5.4m).
Real Madrid have already held a meeting with Pogba’s agent Mino Raiola, in Monte Carlo last week, and are pondering the Italian club’s eye-watering demands before the sides next reconvene.
Notwithstanding their track record of spending hugely on marquee names, even the European champions are finding Juve’s terms prohibitively expensive.
The Italians are asking for €100m (£85m) for the 23-year-old midfielder, who is currently on duty with France at the European Championship, and around €10m-€20m in add-ons should Real, for example, win the Champions League next year.
Wages are another sticking point, with Pogba asking for €12-€13m per season until 2021 and Real coming back with an offer of €8-€9m per season.
“Pogba will be the man of this transfer market,” Raiola said. Should Real eventually break the bank to sign the Frenchman they will almost certainly have to exceed the €100m they paid for Gareth Bale and the £80m it cost them to sign Cristiano Ronaldo.
José Mourinho is also in the market for a player who left Manchester United on a free transfer in 2012 but the club has balked at Juventus’s demands.
Mourinho is believed to have made a bid of €90m for Pogba last summer while at Chelsea only to be put off by the player’s wages and his preference for what he considers a “historical” or traditional club rather than a nouveau riche one.
In the meantime Real have confirmed that they will exercise their buy-back clause for the Spain striker Álvaro Morata, with the European champions to pay €30m (£23m) for the player they sold to Juventus in 2014 for €20m. There is talk of him then being put up for auction which would be of interest to Chelsea in particular.
For United, there may be some consolation in that they are in talks with Raiola over signing two other of his clients, the Borussia Dortmund midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan and the now free Sweden captain Zlatan Ibrahimovic.