Serie A's Top Scorer Plays for Monza — Napoli Want Him in January

The top scorer in Serie A plays for the team sitting 18th. Gustavo Varela has nine league goals for Monza, more than anyone else in the division, and on Wednesday the chase for him stopped being a rumour. Napoli have already contacted the 21-year-old's representatives, Football Italia reports, and the club doing the chasing is the one he scored against a fortnight ago. The whole title race and the whole relegation fight meet in this one chase, and it runs through the Serie A front.

The pressure has a voice now. Roberto Sosa, who played up front for Napoli, went on Radio Marte and said the quiet part plainly: Rasmus Højlund cannot improve while Lorenzo Lucca is the only striker pushing him in training. “Højlund can't play every game. If you want the Dane to improve, you have to put him up against someone strong in training during the week,” Sosa said. “How is he going to improve competing with Lucca? Maybe Lorenzo can improve that way, but not him.” Lucca, he added, would struggle to start for Lecce, who sit near the bottom themselves. Earlier this week Troy Deeney called Lucca one of the worst strikers he has ever seen. Lucca is expected to leave Napoli on loan in January.

Varela's numbers are the kind that make sporting directors lose their nerve. Nine goals in ten league appearances and eleven in all competitions, from an expected-goals figure of 4.5 — he has scored twice what his chances said he should. He found the net in seven of his first nine league matches, equalled a mark not seen since Pierino Prati by scoring nine in his first nine, and took the league's Rising Star of the Month award for October after five goals in four games that month. Monza signed him from Benfica in the summer for a fee reported at about €2.5 million. Four months on, the reported asking price sits between €40 and €50 million, his contract runs to 2030, and there is no release clause in it.

Napoli do not need a scouting report, because they have already been on the other end of him. On October 28 at the Brianteo, Højlund put Napoli ahead after ten minutes, and Varela answered before half-time — a glancing header from Jay Robinson's cross that made him the outright top scorer in the league. Napoli pulled away after the break to win 4-1, through Politano, Rafa Marín and De Bruyne, but the header is the moment this story turns on. The striker Napoli want has already beaten their defence in a game their own striker scored in.

Napoli's need is written in the table. They are tenth on 15 points, fourteen behind leaders Lazio, with four wins from eleven — and manager Massimiliano Allegri is working under open dissatisfaction from the stands. Højlund has three league goals. On Sunday he missed a chance from two yards in the 1-1 draw with Lazio, the sort of miss that follows a striker around all week. Italian reporting says Napoli are preparing four January signings for Allegri, with Varela the first name for the attack and a structure of €15 million plus Lucca going the other way already floated in the Corriere dello Sport and Gazzetta dello Sport reporting. Arsenal have made an enquiry, according to A Bola in Portugal. Barcelona are monitoring him. Benfica, the club that sold him for a few million in the summer, hold a matching right.

Monza's side of this is uglier. Eighteenth on seven points, with two wins all season, they are being kept within reach of safety by one player's finishing. Coach Ivan Juric was asked last month whether he fears losing Varela in January and answered like a man buying time: “January is a long way off.” It is not, anymore. A relegation fight rarely survives selling its top scorer in the middle of it, and Monza hold the one card that matters — with no release clause, every euro of any deal is their choice, and the price of going down dwarfs the price being quoted for him.

Before January comes his other audition. Varela is in Portugal's senior squad for the first time, in Jorge Jesus's first selection since Cristiano Ronaldo announced his international retirement — a 28-man list built around renewal, with Varela and Porto's Alberto Costa the two first-time call-ups. Portugal have already sealed their Nations League quarter-final place and host Denmark in Braga on Saturday, then go to Cardiff to face Wales on Tuesday. A debut in that company prices him for a different market again. Then the league resumes: Napoli host Torino on Saturday, November 21, and Monza host Fiorentina on Monday, November 23. By then the question hanging over January will have sharpened — whether the top scorer in Italy finishes the season with the team in 18th, or with the club he scored against in October.