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Chelsea and Newcastle United are set to battle it out to sign young French forward Hugo Ekitike in the summer, although Borussia Dortmund are also monitoring developments.
Still only 19, he has emerged as one of French football’s brightest talents this season, having scored nine times in 20 appearances in the league for Reims.
Newcastle were sufficiently impressed that they reached an agreement with his club to sign him on transfer deadline day, having met his agreed fee of £33 million, but Ekitike turned the move down, and opted to remain at his boyhood club until the end of the season.
And that has given Chelsea the chance to potentially steal him from under the noses of their Premier League rivals in the summer,
Dortmund are also interested because they are increasingly reconciled to the fact that they will need to replace the in-demand Erling Haaland, when the transfer window reopens.
Andy is an exiled English football fan living in Cyprus. He loves all sports but football is his abiding passion, and he still has dreams every now and then about scoring the winning goal in a Wembley Cup Final, even though his playing days are long gone. He follows most major leagues, across Europe at least, and has a favoured team in each. When he’s not watching, listening, reading or downloading podcasts about football, he spend his time worrying about his beloved Arsenal.