Could Dean Smith’s Premier League strugglers Villa raid Bundesliga outfit Werder Bremen to sign their very own Alexis Sanchez?
There was something distinctly Alexis Sanchez-esque about the way Milot Rashica opened the scoring during Werder Bremen’s Bundesliga clash away at Bayern Munich on Saturday.
The jet-heeled Kosovan cut inside onto his favoured right foot, turned on the afterburners to leave David Alaba choking on his dust before firing a rocket of a shot into Manuel Neuer’s goal.
It was a goal that will give Aston Villa fans everywhere a nasty case of déjà vu. On that fateful day in May 2015, as Tim Sherwood’s Villa were blown away by Arsenal in the FA Cup final, Sanchez nearly tore the net off its hinges with an almost carbon-copy version of Rashica’s weekend wonderstrike.
Unlike the worst Manchester United signing of the 21st century, however, Rashica has his full career ahead of him and the chances are that he will follow in Sanchez’s footsteps with a big-money move to the Premier League at the peak of his powers.
According to Kreis Zeitung, Aston Villa themselves are eyeing up a potential £33 million, club-record deal for a exhilerating winger who made his name at Vitesse Arnhem before moving to Bremen in 2018.
That blockbuster at Bayern was Rashica’s ninth goal of the season, making 2019/20 the most prolific season of his career so far. And with the Bundesliga’s official website going as far as to compare the 23-year-old to a peak-era Alexis, Aston Villa could soon have their own version of a man who terrorised Premier League defences during a stellar spell in North London.
Rashica might have a long way to go before he can match Sanchez’s achievements in the game but, with that same stocky frame, that explosive acceleration and the ability to fire the ball like an Exocet past an unsuspecting goalkeeper, those stylistic similarities cannot be ignored.
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