Mercato Madness: Lucas Leiva Loan Deal Agreed?

Stop me if you've heard this one before: according to media reports in Italy, Napoli are close to a loan deal for Lucas Leiva.

This has been a saga throughout the summer, one that keeps popping up to tantalize for a couple of days, then disappearing again for weeks at a time. This time, though, there's more detail than we've gotten before, lending an air of legitimacy that we haven't gotten before.

According to those reports, Napoli will take on the Liverpool midfielder on loan for the season for a €2 million initial fee, with a €10 million purchase option next summer that becomes mandatory after a certain (as of yet unspecified) number of appearances. Any wage sharing agreements are unknown, but given how senior loans generally work there's almost certainly some form of sharing arrangement.

The move to bring in the Brazilian midfielder makes as much sense as it ever did, but we've been talking about a deal for Lucas for two months now and to be honest it's getting kind of tiring. It's time to get a deal done already.

If the deal does fall apart, Napoli are still keeping the option open of acquiring Sandro from Tottenham, presumably on a similar deal. They've also expressed an interest in Sami Khedira now that Real Madrid has made him available, but so has half of Europe. The German international would be a dream signing, but will be fairly pricey and very hard to get with all the top-shelf competition Napoli would face should they get in to the bidding.