Newcastle have stepped up their interest in long-term striker target Hugo Ekitike.
The Tyneside club have held meetings in Germany over the past week with Eintracht Frankfurt for the France U21 international.
Sky in Germany are reporting that further meetings with Ekitike's representatives have taken place in Austria, where Newcastle have travelled for a pre-season training camp.
Talks centre on what would be a club-record offer for the 23-year-old, with the Bundesliga side valuing the striker at £86m.
Alexander Isak is Newcastle's current club record after he joined in a £63m deal from Real Sociedad in August 2022.
Newcastle tried and failed to sign Ekitike in 2022, as he moved to Paris Saint-Germain from Reims instead.
Ekitike scored 22 goals in 48 games across all competitions last season for Frankfurt as he helped them qualify for the Champions League.
Ekitike has been a Manchester United target this summer after the club explored the conditions of a deal, while Chelsea and Liverpool have also been interested.
Newcastle have spent £55m on one major summer signing so far following the arrival of Anthony Elanga from Nottingham Forest.
Sky Sports' Adam Bate:
When Hugo Ekitike was still a teenager at Stade Reims, the coaching staff prepared a development plan for him. They analysed the performances of Kylian Mbappe and then picked out two more players that Ekitike might realistically aspire to replicate.
"These were players with similar profiles from teams that were better than our team, but not at the distance Paris Saint-Germain were from us," Oscar Garcia, Reims' then head coach, told Sky Sports. "We challenged him to reach the level of the other two strikers."
On the face of it, that was a perfectly reasonable short-term target. Prior to his final season at Reims, Ekitike had not even scored a goal in France's top tier. He had spent the second half of the previous campaign on loan at Danish club Vejle Boldklub.
He returned to Reims as the fourth-choice forward but soon forced Oscar to reassess. Soon after that, the two strikers whose level he had been encouraged to hit were no longer in his sights. "Within months, he wanted to reach the same level as Mbappe."
It is a tale that offers a glimpse into the mindset of the Eintracht Frankfurt forward who has long been linked with a move to the Premier League.
"He always was a talented player but some coaches did not like him because of his profile and sometimes because of his character," concedes Oscar. "They were thinking he was a little bit arrogant. He always wanted to be compared with the best ones."
Read more about Hugo Ekitike's rise here.
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