Reported £13m Newcastle United and Brighton target Boulaye Dia will be free to leave Reims in January, the Ligue 1 club’s president Jean-Pierre Caillot told Top Mercato.
After two months of Ligue 1 football, the division’s top scorer is not Kylian Mbappe or Wissam Ben Yedder. Nor is it Moussa Dembele, Kevin Volland or a reborn Moise Kean.
Instead, flying high at the forefront of the Golden Boot race is a 23-year-old who, in October, became the first Reims player since the 1970s to score a hat-trick in France’s top flight.
Boulaye Dia took his tally to eight in eight games with a double against Lens before the international break, with his second in a thrilling 4-4 draw a goal of such brilliance any of PSG’s superstars would be proud to call it their own.
Somewhat inevitably, Dia’s name is starting to appear in the gossip columns with, the Chronicle reporting that Newcastle and Brighton and Hove Albion are both interested heading into the January transfer window.
Fortunately for the Premier League duo, Reims’ president has already promised his £13 million-rated talisman that he won’t stand in Dia’s way.
“(Dia) could have left this summer (but) he did not leave because he did not receive the offer he wanted. Boulaye refused two offers, from Lokomotiv Moscow and Hellas Verona. For various reasons, he did not want to go to these clubs,” Caillot says.
“If he stays (beyond January), I would be delighted. If he has an offer that suits him and us too, I could not object because I gave him my word.”
Dia netted a respectable seven times in 24 matches last term but, remarkably, he has already beaten that tally eight games into 2020/21.
Newcastle’s interest is surely tied into an injury suffered by top scorer Callum Wilson, with the misfiring Joelinton the only other centre-forward at Steve Bruce’s disposal.
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