Besiktas beat Manchester United to the signature of 12-year-old wonder kid Nihat Ahmedzade according to the Aksam newspaper.
Per the source, Ahmedzade has been targetted by several clubs and was invited to trials with United.
The Red Devils were reportedly keen on the youngster but he opted to sign for Besiktas to be close to family and settle in a country where he understands the language.
Turkey and Azerbaijan speak a mutually intelligible branch of Oghuz Turkish and have close ethnic, cultural and historical ties.
Besiktas have put emphasis on their youth system over the past few seasons and invested heavily in their academy and scouting efforts.
Ahmedzade was discovered by Besiktas scouts in Azerbaijan while he was playing for the Sumgait U12 side.
Despite his young age the newspaper report calls him the ‘Azeri Messi’. Now everyone claims to be the next Messi and that never usually works out well so perhaps it is a bit early to get too carried away but he looks like he may have a bright future.
Besiktas currently do not have a single player in the first-team from the academy and have made it a priority to change their approach to youth football.
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The club hope to integrate players developed in-house to the first-team over the next few seasons.
The Black-Whites have one of the oldest average ages in the Super Lig (27.9) with several players aged over 30 in the first-team.
In fact, the regular starting lineup has an even older average age with most star players such as Ricardo Quaresma, Ryan Babel and Pepe all over the age of 30.
