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There’s no doubt that 21 year Argentinian midfielder, Javier Pastore, playing for Serie A club Palermo is one of the most promising talents in European Soccer today. He won the Serie A young footballer of the year award just two weeks ago, and is leading 6th place Palermo in goals this season, scoring 8 and adding 3 assists. He has been especially impressive in both wins over Juventus this season – Scoring once in the 3-1 win back in September and last night, providing the pass for the Miccoli opener and generally, doing whatever he pleases on the bitch against the Bianconeri.

Still, the announcement made today by Palermo president Mauro Zamparini, regarding upping Pastore’s release clause to €100 million was a bit too much for me. Yes, it won’t really take 100 million Euros to get Pastore, but with all the craziness going around the past week – 35 million pounds on Andy Carroll, 21-23 million on David Luiz from Benfica, two decent players with a lot of potential but hardly any real achievements drives me insane. It’s nothing new, but I did think with UEFA’s new transfer rules coming in very soon teams will clamp down on the spending.

Again, Pastore won’t cost 100, but I won’t be surprised to find the insane team (Real Madrid, Manchester City) who’ll spend at least 30 million on a player who has only 11 career goals at the top flight in Italy and tends to disappear in matches following a great performance. Maybe this is just Palermo’s way of protecting their investment and keep the poachers away, but I couldn’t keep my fingers from writing when I saw a nine digit price tag next to Pastore. Lets hope he can develop into a truly great player, which he just might be in a year or two, and then talk about these insane fees being justified or not. Right now, it’s more of a joke, a very expensive one.