Chelsea could still sign Jules Kounde if Barcelona fail to register him
According to a tweet from Managing Barca, via Cadena SER (h/t Football.London), Chelsea could still sign their long-term target Jules Kounde if his current new club Barcelona fail to register him before the end of this month. There is a clause in his contract that the former Sevilla will leave the Catalan club if they do not register before the 31st of August.
Kounde was linked with the Blues this summer and in previous years as well. They were very close to signing the centre-back this time before Barcelona nipped in and took him away. Now, the Spanish side’s difficulty is to let go of Frenkie de Jong so that they can register the aforementioned new signing.
If that doesn’t happen on or before the deadline day of this transfer window, Kounde would be free to walk away from Spain, most probably in search of a new club. With the World Cup around the corner, the Frenchman would not want to be wasting any week of football right now.
The 23-year-old has been one of the top-rated centre-backs around Europe in the last year or two. He was one of Sevilla’s best players in the last two seasons, owing to his consistency and quality of performances.
The Bordeaux academy product, who moved to Seville in 2019, has 11 caps for the French national team. He made 44 appearances in all competitions for Sevilla last season, chiefly playing as a centre-back but also being used as a right-back in some of the games.
As of now, despite the signatures of Kalidou Koulibaly and Marc Cucurella, Chelsea are in hot pursuit of another centre-back. They are finding it hard to get the Wesley Fofana deal over the line with persistence from Leicester City.
Can the Blues wait for the Kounde-Barcelona situation to come to its conclusion? If they do that and things go in favour of the player leaving the Spanish side, they can have a free shot at signing him.
When we look at Kounde versus Fofana debate, the former has more experience and age-wise is further along the line of development. But that isn’t really a way to tell if one is better than the other.
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Both are good centre-backs and both could be a wise addition at Chelsea. Hopefully, we manage to get one of them, but with Kounde, it could be tricky. Barca faced the same issue of registering several signings earlier this summer.
They activated several economic levers to get through that barrier and we can rest assured that they would not want to let go of Kounde so easily.