Friday, December 31, 2021 at 5:25 PM• Dominic Mostert

Tottenham Hotspur will soon make Franck Kessié a ‘lucrative offer’, reports ESPN Friday afternoon. The AC Milan midfielder has an expiring contract and can negotiate with interested clubs from Saturday, the start of the new calendar year. Tottenham hope to persuade Kessie to sign a pre-contract so that he can be taken over from Milan in the summer on a free transfer.

Last summer Tottenham was already fishing for Kessié and earlier this week wrote the Express about the renewed interest. The newspaper kept a lid on it: the level of the offer for the 25-year-old Ivorian would depend on whether at least one high earner leaves next month. After all, the necessary money must be made available for Kessié’s arrival. In September, he declined another offer from Milan to extend his contract at an annual salary of €6.5 million; reported at the time La Gazzetta dello Sport that Kessié wants to earn 8 million euros annually.

The Italian sports newspaper then announced that Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain are closely monitoring the situation. However, there is also still a chance that Kessie will decide to stay longer at the San Siro. In July, the midfielder said he has no intention of leaving. “I want to stay here forever,” he even admitted. “The club has always known that I want to stay here. We have a fantastic group of players. We want to live up to the name that Milan has in Europe.” Milan do not want to let another star player go on a free transfer after Gianluigi Donnarumma and Hakan Çalhanoglu.

A week before the summer transfer deadline expired calciomercato incidentally, Kessie turned down a chance to go to Tottenham despite Milan’s willingness to listen to the offer from England. Now the Londoners seem to be returning for the midfielder, who came over from Atalanta in 2017 and since then 205 official appearances for Milan, in which he scored 35 times. Kessié is affectionately referred to as ‘the president’ by his teammates and Milan fans, as he is known as a leading figure in the dressing room. In the summer, Kessié was named as a possible new captain, but the choice fell on Simon Kjaer. “I love it when the fans sing ‘There’s only one captain!’ I want to spend my entire football life here,” Kessié said in July.