Chelsea ‘favorites’ to sign Kerim Alajbegović from Bayer Leverkusen — reports

If you followed the World Cup over the past month or so, you will have likely heard of young Kerim Alajbegović. The 18-year-old winger caught the eye in an otherwise unremarkable Bosnia & Herzegovina side, especially in their 3-1 win against Qatar, in which he was named the Superior Player of the Match.

Bosnia’s World Cup campaign fizzled out in the Round of 32 against the US, but for Alajbegović, the drama may just be getting started. Despite just re-joining Bayer Leverkusen at the end of last season, after a season at RB Salzburg, the youngster is seeing plenty of action in the rumor mill. And according to The Telegraph, Chelsea are “the favorites” to emerge as winners once all the grinding’s done, with all the other suitors, mostly from the Serie A, meeting the same fate as all the suitors in The Odyssey.

Alajbegović got his start in the youth system of his hometown 1.FC Köln before joining Leverkusen’s academy as a teenager in 2021. Last summer however, despite being supposedly very highly rated, he was allowed to join Salzburg in a €2m transfer. Leverkusen did retain a buy-back at double that fee, which they would duly exercise at the end of the season. So, in effect, it was paid loan. That said, they are likely to recoup that fee many times over with Alajbegović apparently being valued at £30m now.

While the report claims that Chelsea manager Xabi Alonso is “understood to be enthusiastic” about this potential move, we have apparently not made any actual contact with Leverkusen yet. Might want to do that at some point if we want to add yet another young winger to our overflowing collection of young wingers.