Giovanni Simeone is putting together a career year at Verona. He has hit the net 12 times, with no penalty kicks, and has already scored twice as much as in the entire previous season. Nobody in the history of the Scaligeri had been as prolific in the first 17 rounds, not even legend Luca Toni.
Simeone joined Verona on a recommendation by Eusebio Di Francesco, who coached him at Cagliari. The switch on the bench has not affected him. On the contrary, he has thrived under Igor Tudor and his more effective brand of football.
Simone has been rather up-and-down in his previous years in Serie A. However, while he did not log eye-popping numbers, he reached the double-digit threshold in four out of six seasons, with three different sides. He is well on his way to shattering his personal best, which he recorded at Fiorentina in 2017-2018 when he found the target 14 times.
Verona signed him on a €1.5M season-long loan with a €10.5M option to buy. They will certainly pick it up, maybe as soon as January. But his stay with the Gialloblù might not be too long. West Ham and Sevilla have already set their sights on him, Tuttomercatoweb informs. And if he keeps it up, the top Italian outfits will also join the race. He could be an alternative for the teams that miss out on Dusan Vlahovic and Gianluca Scamacca, La Gazzetta dello Sport reports. His price tag has already doubled in the span of a few months.