It is a small world. Yankuba Minteh was given his chance at Odense Boldklub by Andreas Alm, the manager who handed one Alexander Isak his professional debut at AIK. This is certainly not a direct comparison - these are two very different players - but having had to break their transfer record to sign a 23-year-old Isak, Newcastle United hope that they can potentially save millions by landing a player like Minteh at just 18 years of age for a fraction of the price.
It is all part of the club's two-pronged transfer strategy. As much as Newcastle are targeting ready-made players for the first team, such as Isak, the Magpies are also on the lookout for emerging talent like Minteh and mid-season arrival Garang Kuol before they 'explode' in value.
This will be crucial from a Financial Fair Play perspective. While Newcastle are way ahead of schedule on the field, after qualifying for the Champions League for the first time in more than two decades, the club's revenues are still catching up following years of commercial stagnation under Mike Ashley.
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Newcastle, as a result, cannot compete with those clubs at the top of the Premier League when it comes to wages and and Eddie Howe admitted it would have been 'very difficult for us to have done much in the transfer market at all' if his side had finished outside the top four. Critics may take that comment with a pinch of salt, given Newcastle have never talked up their financial might before going on to spend reasonable sums, but it is rather telling that Minteh looks set to be the club's first signing of the summer. Yes, Newcastle will look to do deals for 'elite' targets, such as Leicester City star James Maddison, but the black-and-whites will also have an eye on the future.
"There's a desire from the club to sign young players with huge potential for the future and maybe use the loan market," Howe previously told reporters. "With Financial Fair Play, it's very difficult for us to continually sign ready-made players who can go straight into the Premier League. They come at a huge cost.
"To be smart and invest in young players is definitely an avenue for us, but then the quality of recruitment has to be right, so it's a big challenge."
The net has clearly been cast wide - from the Central Coast of New South Wales in Australia for Kuol to the island of Funen in Denmark for Minteh - to snare these signings when they have already beeped on the radar of other clubs. Minteh's rise has certainly been dramatic - the Gambian only moved to Europe a year ago - but Newcastle have done their homework on the rapid winger. Newcastle's recruitment team already know, for instance, that Minteh settled remarkably quickly after joining Odense's academy, which led to a formal promotion to the first team.
Newcastle have also left no stone unturned with their character checks. Minteh has previously said that he celebrates an assist 'as much as if I had scored myself', which is just the sort of selfless individual Newcastle want to bring to the club.
However, it is important to stress that Minteh will almost certainly be loaned out if the mooted £5.8m deal goes through so the youngster can get the required experience he needs to qualify for a GBE. Ensuring Minteh is loaned to the right team for his development will be absolutely vital and is one of the reasons why Newcastle have looked at the multi-club model so that these talents have the right environment to thrive in with similar values.
On that point, Amanda Staveley told the Financial Times Summit earlier this year that the 'opportunity to buy players affordably well early in the cycle is critical to our growth'. Staveley went on to add that Newcastle had to ensure they had the right multi-club 'fit' given the 'changes around GBE points'.
That search remains ongoing, but this is a low-risk deal. If Minteh flourishes on loan, and continues to develop, Newcastle will have a player who could one day play for the first team. Even if Minteh never represents the club, chances are, Newcastle will still be able to generate a huge profit, and the black-and-whites have to become better traders. Remarkably, after years of mutual terminations, Chris Wood's move to Nottingham Forest was the first time Newcastle generated a fee of note, around £15m, since Ayoze Perez joined Leicester City in 2019.
Sporting director Dan Ashworth has previously stressed how Newcastle will 'have to trade' to be able to 'reinvest and go again' and Man City have led the way in that regard. Last summer, for instance, the champions made £38.5m from the sales of Gavin Bazunu, Samuel Edozie, Romeo Lavia and Juan Larios to Southampton. The quartet had only made three first-team appearances combined for Pep Guardiola's team.
These were not one-off deals. City have long been smart sellers, whether it was the fees generated for Lukas Nmecha (£11m to Wolfsburg), Ivan Ilic (£6.8m to Hellas Verona), Pablo Maffeo (£8.8m to Stuttgart), Angus Gunn (£13.5m to Southampton) or Rabbi Matondo (£11m to Schalke) in recent years. Again these were all individuals who either barely played for the first team or who did not feature at all.
However, Newcastle won't be thinking like that now. They believe they are on the verge of securing a potential future first-teamer in Yankuba Minteh.
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