West Ham target Scamacca could be next Zlatan

Gianluca Scamacca is in demand and it is easy to see why. He is a 6'5" Italy international striker who scored 16 times in Serie A last season, a man capable of all sorts of goals. The only surprise is the route that he has taken to the top.

At 23, Scamacca is both early phenomenon and late bloomer. Identified at 15 as one of the brightest talents in Europe, twice he travelled to the Netherlands as a teenager in search of opportunity. But he was still out on loan at Ascoli in Serie B at the age of 21.

Now, after shining for Sassuolo, he is not only seen as the striker around whom Italy should build their attack, but also a man who can command a fee in excess of £40m given that he might just be the heir to Zlatan Ibrahimovic. The big man with the dancing feet.

The reason for the delay in his emergence is confusing given his frame. This was what made him impossible to miss as a young teen. Defenders would bounce off him. Goalkeepers were unable to stop his shots even if they found themselves in the way of them.

The only hard part for the young Scamacca was finding a challenge.

That was at the heart of his unusual decision to walk away from Roma's academy at 16. Leaving for PSV was a controversial move - Scamacca had already swapped Lazio for Roma as a young boy - and seen as a damning indictment of Italy's youth development.

For PSV, and their sporting director Marcel Brands, it was a coup. "That was a job well done by Marcel," former Jong PSV coach Pascal Jansen tells Sky Sports. "He was the one who made the contact with AS Roma. Italian kids dream of playing in Italy but Gianluca is different now and he was different then. He looks for the challenges.

"We scouted him, we went there, we looked at him and obviously he was