Football
Ben Gladwell, Italy correspondent 7y

Andrea Belotti worth more than Lionel Messi - Torino chairman Urbano Cairo

Torino chairman Urbano Cairo regrets not putting a higher release clause in the contract of Andrea Belotti after his seven-minute hat trick took him to the top of the Serie A scoring charts on Sunday.

The €100 million clause -- inserted in a new deal that the 23-year-old signed last December, and which runs until 2021 -- can only be activated by foreign clubs.

"If you think back to when we inserted that clause, €100m seemed a crazy figure, but today it seems too low," Cairo told Sky Sport. "If I were to do the clause now, I would put it at €150m. Just compare him to the goals Lionel Messi has scored, yet Belotti is younger so he's worth more."

Belotti's 22 goals so far this season put him in second place behind Messi for the European Golden Shoe award, which has not gone to an Italian since Francesco Totti won it with 26 goals in 2006-07.

A year before that, it was won by Luca Toni, who scored 31 goals in the 2005-06 Serie A campaign and the former Palermo, Fiorentina and Juventus striker believes Belotti can do even better this term and even threaten Gonzalo Higuain's league record of 36 from last term.

"If he carries on at this rate, he has no limits," Toni wrote in La Gazzetta dello Sport. "He can even beat the 31 I scored for Fiorentina in 2006. Andrea's a great lad and I'm delighted for him because he always want to improve.

"I'd say he can break through 30 goals because he's so good and because he's in a side who are playing for him, and it's a huge help to have two wingers giving you a hand.

"Today, he is without doubt the best forward in the league. It's only natural that Torino are going to receive offers for him from big clubs and we'll have to see what the club's intentions are -- whether they want to make their side even more competitive, built around Belotti and his goals, because it's also only normal for a player like him to want to play in a big club."

Torino coach Sinisa Mihajlovic hopes the Italy international will resist any temptations and choose to stay in Turin next season after he turned their clash with Palermo around, turning a 1-0 deficit into a 3-1 win in just seven second-half minutes.

"He was outstanding today," Mihajlovic is quoted as saying by La Gazzetta dello Sport. "He's the top-scorer and he's the best Italian forward around, but he must not settle for what he has already done because he can get a lot better still.

"Let's just keep focused on this season and then we will see what happens, but certainly I'll be telling the president that he's worth more than €100m and that he should touch up that clause."

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