[스포츠한국 김영건 기자] In a situation where Manchester United’s interest in Kim Min-jae (26) is growing day by day, the associated team, Napoli, promotes the renewal of the contract with Kim Min-jae.
Italian media ‘Napoli Area’ said on the 8th (Korea time), “Napoli does not want to lose ‘Korean giant’ Kim Min-jae. We are in the process of renewing the contract.”
“The contract between Kim Min-jae and Napoli has a release clause of 50 million euros (about 70 billion won). This amount seems high, but it is an amount that is easy to manage for a big club interested in Kim Min-jae,” he explained. “Napoli wants to remove the release clause through a renewal or increase the size of the release clause.” Kim Min-jae’s contract with Napoli runs until June 2025.
Before the 2022-2023 season, Napoli filled the vacancy of Kalidou Koulibaly, who transferred to Chelsea, with Kim Min-jae. At the time, Kim Min-jae was just a ‘newcomer’ who was attracting attention in the Turkish League. However, after joining the team, Kim Min-jae became the core of Napoli.
Kim Min-jae is the first Asian player to win the Serie A Player of the Month award and is writing history on the Italian stage. He is also very likely to win the trophy in his first season. Napoli are strong in winning Serie A with 65 points. The gap between Inter Milan and second place is 15 points. Naturally, Kim Min-jae’s performance attracted the attention of big clubs, and Manchester United and Tottenham showed interest among them.
The interest of the big European clubs towards Kim Min-jae has materialized. In the match of the 25th round of Serie A 2022-2023 between Napoli and Lazio, a scout from Manchester United visited to see Kim Min-jae. Manchester United sent a scouting team directly and expressed enthusiasm about recruiting Kim Min-jae.
Fabrizio Romano, a football expert familiar with the European transfer market, said on his SNS on the 5th, “Man Utd started watching Kim Min-jae from October 2022, and also watching the match against Lazio .” He made renewing the contract with Kim Min-jae a priority. We have already presented a new contract to Kim Min-jae.”
Napoli have to keep hold of key defender Kim Min-jae, but are struggling in negotiations. Romano said, “It is difficult for Napoli to convince Kim Min-jae. Kim Min-jae rejected the offer from Napoli, but we have to wait and see the negotiations,” he said of the current situation. This refusal is interpreted as Kim Min-jae pondering between transferring and staying.
Attention is focused on whether Kim Min-jae will stay in Naples and conquer the Italian stage, or whether he will transfer to Manchester United and challenge the English stage.
