Manchester United Targets Nicolo Tresoldi as Future Striker
Manchester United’s striker search has a new name on the radar – and it’s one many inside Old Trafford are only just learning to pronounce.
Nicolo Tresoldi.
Ask around the football department and you’ll find staff who hadn’t heard of him a few weeks ago. Ask in the data room and you get a very different story. The Club Brugge forward has been sitting on their long list of potential centre-forward targets, quietly ticking every box that matters in United’s new recruitment model.
A goalscorer built for the numbers era
On paper, Tresoldi looks exactly like the kind of deal United now want to make before a player explodes into the £100m bracket.
Last season he finished as the top scorer in the Belgian top flight, with 23 goals and nine assists in all competitions. He doesn’t turn 22 until next month. He led the line for Belgium’s champions, fired them to the title, and did it with the kind of penalty-box efficiency scouts crave: most of his goals came from inside the area, one or two touches, no fuss.
The Jupiler Pro League is a step below the Premier League, but Tresoldi has already tested himself against elite opposition. He found the net in the Champions League against Barcelona, Atletico Madrid and Monaco. Those nights tend to stick in the minds of analysts and sporting directors across Europe. They also tell United he can handle more than just domestic flat-track bullying.
Inside Old Trafford, there is a reference point. United’s last move into the Belgian market, for goalkeeper Senne Lammens, has been a resounding success. Chief goalkeeping scout Tony Coton pushed that deal, the data team backed it, and the club feel vindicated. Tresoldi sits in the same sweet spot: numbers, age profile, upside.
Club Brugge dig in as Europe circles
Club Brugge have no interest in losing their star striker this summer. They are champions, they are in a strong financial position, and they know what they have on their hands.
But pressure is building.
Roma are understood to have gone in with an offer worth up to €35m (£29m). Local reports in Belgium suggest that kind of bid has already turned the player’s head, or at least made him look beyond Brugge’s blue and black. With the transfer deadline edging closer, every phone call, every headline, nudges him a little further towards the exit.
United, crucially, can go higher. They do not need to blow their budget to beat Roma. A package closer to £35m up front, plus realistic add-ons, would likely be enough to prise Tresoldi away. For a club that want to avoid eye-watering, late-stage superstar fees, it’s exactly the sort of market-value opportunity their revamped recruitment operation is designed to spot.
A striker in all but name
The need is obvious.
Right now, Benjamin Sesko is the only senior recognised striker in the squad. Across a season that could stretch beyond 60 games, that is a risk bordering on reckless.
Michael Carrick has options who can fill in down the middle – Bryan Mbeumo, Amad, Matheus Cunha – but none of them are natural No.9s. They drift, they create, they link. They don’t live in the penalty area.
Joshua Zirkzee has started as the nominal centre-forward in pre-season, yet he spends more time dropping into pockets, knitting play, than attacking the six-yard box. He is a facilitator, not a finisher.
Tresoldi is different. He is a proper centre-forward. At 6ft 1in, he offers presence without being a static target man. His movement is sharp, his runs are timed to arrive, not just to be seen, and he finishes with a ruthless calm that Brugge have leaned on week after week.
That profile matters to Carrick. United don’t just need another attacker. They need someone who thinks like a No.9.
Germany’s nearly man
Tresoldi’s rise has not gone unnoticed at international level either.
He caught the eye playing for Germany at the Under-21 European Championship last year, and his form for Brugge pushed him to the brink of a full call-up for this summer’s World Cup. Julian Nagelsmann came close to taking him.
“Nicolo Tresoldi was very, very close to making the squad. He’s not a classic target man, but a classic striker,” Nagelsmann said. “He was extremely close, but ultimately he didn’t make the squad because we would have had to leave someone else out. That’s not easy.”
The Germany coach made one more point: Tresoldi’s time will come.
Born in Italy, Tresoldi moved to Germany at 13 to join Hannover’s academy, and that pathway has made him eligible for the German national team. His career has already carried the feel of a player on a steady, upward curve – from youth prospect to Bundesliga system product to title-winning spearhead in Belgium.
The next step looks inevitable. The only question is where.
United’s pitch: minutes, ambition, and timing
United’s new transfer strategy is simple in theory and brutal in execution: identify value before it explodes. Find the players who might be £35m now and £100m in three years’ time, not the other way around.
Tresoldi fits neatly into that thinking. Young, proven in Europe, already flirting with a major international breakthrough, and still with plenty of development ahead of him.
The pitch from Old Trafford would almost write itself. Join the biggest club in England. Share the load with Sesko. Grow with a squad being built to challenge for the Premier League title under Carrick. There will be enough minutes to go around; the schedule guarantees that.
Supporters, meanwhile, have been making noise about a different kind of signing. The news that Chelsea are in advanced talks to sign Danny Welbeck has prompted calls for United to hijack the deal and bring back a familiar face as a one-season stopgap. Welbeck, with his experience and connection to the club, would be a smart short-term fix.
But a stopgap doesn’t win you a title on its own. Carrick needs a longer runway than that. He needs a striker who can grow with his project, not just cover a season.
That is where Tresoldi makes sense.
He may not yet be a household name in Manchester. He may still be the player that some inside the club had to Google when his name first came up. But careers like his rarely stay under the radar for long.
If United move now, they won’t just be signing a backup striker. They’ll be betting that the next big No.9 in Europe walks through the doors at Carrington in a Brugge shirt, long before the rest of the continent realises what he’s really worth.
