Two teams keeping an eye on the Sunderland starlet are Bayern Munich and Manchester City.

The biggest teams in Europe are keeping an eye on Sunderland teenager Chris Rigg; interested parties include Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, and Manchester United, according to the Sunderland Echo.

Tony Mowbray, the Sunderland manager at the time, gave 15-year-old Rigg his FA Cup debut against Shrewsbury Town. He therefore became the second-youngest player in the history of the team.

Since then he has been used sporadically in the Black Cats’ first-team fold, making 11 appearances and scoring two goals. Since Michael Beale took over from Mowbray at the Championship side however, Rigg has featured just once in the league and appeared a further three times on the substitutes bench.

Given his young age, the club will want to manage him as well as they can to aid his development. But given his high ceiling, Sunderland may find it tough to keep hold of one of their prized assets. According to the Sunderland Echo, Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United are all monitoring the 16-year-old.

Bigger and better things?

Remaining at Sunderland will aid his development in the short-term almost certainly. There aren’t many 16-year-olds playing in the first-teams of any of Europe’s top clubs and so making the switch to any of the aforementioned quintet could be detrimental to playing time.

But it almost seems inevitable that Rigg moves on to bigger and better things at some point in his career. If a move to the likes of Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City or Manchester United in England or Bayern Munich in Germany materialises, he could well be loaned back out to aid his development and for him to regular minutes.

Sunderland will make a tidy profit too. Given he is an academy graduate and cost the club nothing, they could use the fee to fund future spending. The clubs interested having high spending power and so the Black Cats won’t roll over without likely setting a high asking price first.

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