Gianluca Scamacca is heading to West Ham United, so take a look at the Italy international’s complex history, desire to follow Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s footsteps and get away from his image of Serie A bad boy.
Multiple sources in Italy are confident a deal has been done with Sassuolo for €36m plus €6m in bonuses and a 10 per cent cut of the sell-on fee.
The 23-year-old centre-forward is seen as the future of the Italy strike force to inherit the role from Ciro Immobile and Andrea Belotti.
Born in Rome, his career was certainly not the usual trajectory, as he spent time in both the Lazio and Roma youth academies, a rarity as they are bitter rivals.
He then moved to the Netherlands in January 2015 at the age of 16 to join the PSV Eindhoven academy, returning to Italy for Sassuolo in January 2017.
There were loan spells at Cremonese, PEC Zwolle, Ascoli and Genoa, until he finally hit Serie A form back at Sassuolo last season with 16 goals.
Milan were suggested as his next destination when he said that his hero was Ibrahimovic, not entirely surprising considering their similar physical structure, as Scamacca stands at 1.95m tall (approximately 6ft 4in) and both are covered in tattoos.
Like Ibra, Scamacca has a rather difficult family background that saw his father leave when he was very young.
The rapport with his father, Emiliano, hit the headlines in May 2021 when the parent broke into Roma’s Trigoria training ground with a baseball bat, smashing parked cars and threatening passers-by, reportedly over some perceived outstanding debt that he felt he was owed.
Scamacca has also been through a few agents in his time, ending up in court against Paolo Paloni and briefly being under the guidance of Mino Raiola.