Chelsea watching £8m player who’s ‘technically good’, but Brighton more favourites to sign him
Chelsea have recently started looking at Boca Juniors star Valentin Barco as a potential transfer target.
That is according to a report from 90min.
They claim that Valentin Barco, who’s just 19, is attracting a lot of interest in Europe due to his performances for Argentine club Boca Juniors.
It is understood that Brighton are in pole position and favourites to sign the teenage defender, but Boca Juniors are hoping they can get the player to sign a new contract.
Apparently, the Argentine left-back currently has a release clause worth around £8million, with the current deal expiring in December 2024.
90min adds that there’s an entire host of European sides alerted to Barco, including both Brighton and Chelsea.
The report says that Chelsea, Manchester City, Newcastle United, Brentford, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Nottingham Forest have all watched the South American talent in recent weeks
In addition, Celtic, Bayer Leverkusen, Borussia Dortmund, Benfica, Porto, Roma, Juventus, PSG and Monaco have checked on him.
Yes, Chelsea are linked with yet another emerging talent from overseas. It must be tiring for supporters to hear now as the club continues with this transfer strategy.
Barco has broken into the Boca Juniors first team in recent months, which is quite the feat at his age.
He’s most commonly recognised as a full-back. However, he’s a left-sided flyer that has been playing further up the pitch as a winger as well.
The youngster has previously been described as “a technically very good player” by Juan Roman Riquelme, as quoted by The Argus.
READ MORE:
Brighton in full Bloom and ready for Europe thanks to ‘the Lizard’
They don’t call Tony Bloom “the Lizard” for no reason. The Brighton owner has earned almost $4m as a cold-blooded poker player and will be the proudest man in the Amex Stadium on Thursday nightwhen the team he rescued from the brink of extinction in 2009 make their debut on the European stage against AEK Athens.
After a three-year absence from the poker table, Bloom – who is said to have spent countless hours at the amusement arcades on Brighton pier as a child before studying maths at university and establishing his gambling empire – returned last year and won $360,000 (£290,000) in prize money. “I’ve always enjoyed playing poker, but life sometimes … there’s a lot going on with business, the football club and a young family,” he said. “I just heard about this tournament three days ago and pot-limit Omaha is my favourite game. Tough field, but I said I’ll give it a go.”
Related: The more Brighton sell their best players, the better they become | Ben McAleer
Bloom was also reported to have pocketed more than £800,000 after betting on his horse Energumene to win the Queen Mother Champion Chase for the second year running at Cheltenham in March and owns a betting consultancy firm called Starlizard, which is believed to have an annual turnover of more than £100m.
But Brighton could turn out to be his most lucrative gamble of the lot, after two summers in which the club have banked more than £350m, culminating in the sale of Moisés Caicedo to Chelsea for a British record fee, and still managed to qualify for the Europa League thanks to a sixth-place finish in the Premier League.
Bloom grew up watching Brighton with his grandfather Harry (a vice-chairman during the 1970s when Brian Clough had a brief spell as manager), invested £80m in 2009 to help pay for the new stadium that will host AEK and remains the driving force behind the success at a club where there has also been a constant turnover of staff as well as players.
Paul Winstanley, the former head of recruitment who moved to Chelsea with Graham Potter last year, and the Football Association’s former director of elite development Dan Ashworth, who is now at Newcastle, helped to build the impressive scouting network that is the envy of the Premier League and beyond. But just as Roberto De Zerbi’s side have picked up where they left off last season despite the departures of Caicedo and Alexis Mac Allister, behind the scenes the technical director David Weir and head of recruitment Sam Jewell – who is credited for scouting both players in South America – have seamlessly stepped up.
