West Ham are reportedly in the hunt for the next Declan Rice, as Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet believe we are looking at Malmo’s Amel Mujanic.
The 17-year-old defensive midfielder is yet to play a senior game for the Allsvenskan Sodra side, but has caught the interest of the Hammers and Leeds United as he has not yet been offered an apprenticeship contract.
It is Mujanic’s main priority right now to stay with Malmo, however, as he thrives there and wishes to fight for a place in the first-team under Uwe Rosler, unlike many of the youth stars who have left the club in recent years.
If the contract and the chance for first-team football does not arise, though, his agent, former Croatian centre-forward Ivan Klasnic, has revealed that they will consider any appropriate offer.
“There is interest from other countries than England too,” Klasnic claims. “I have tried to contact the sports manager, Mr Andersson, but he does not answer either on the phone or on my SMS.
“It is very frustrating. I don’t know how they think about Amel. I even played with Markus Rosenberg in Werder Bremen and we still have contact.”
If Malmo continue to ignore Mujanic’s situation, we could swoop in and benefit from signing the teenager, like how we did with Rice when Chelsea let the Englishman leave.
Mujanic would need time to develop in the academy in East London to ready himself for the English game, but we have the ability to allow him to bed into our system before offering the midfielder a shot in the first-team.
There would need to be guarantees that Mujanic would be given his chance, though, as Leeds have regularly trusted academy graduates to be perform in the first team this season.
