{"id":11691,"date":"2026-05-22T03:14:58","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T03:14:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=11691"},"modified":"2026-05-22T03:14:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T03:14:58","slug":"barcelona-battle-arsenal-and-chelsea-for-leverkusen-teenager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=11691","title":{"rendered":"Barcelona battle Arsenal and Chelsea for Leverkusen teenager"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-td-block-uid=\"tdi_65\">\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<p><strong>Barcelona have joined Arsenal and Chelsea in expressing \u2018concrete interest\u2019 in Bayer Leverkusen striker Christian Kofane.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Kofane has caught the eye of top clubs around Europe after an impressive debut season in the Bundesliga. The 19-year-old has scored seven goals in 44 matches across all competitions, after joining from Albacete last summer.<\/p>\n<p>Kofane made his international debut for Cameroon in 2025 and has since scored twice in six senior caps. The teenager\u2019s agent, Eric Depolo, has confirmed interest from Arsenal and believes the Gunners could sign a \u2018\u20ac100m player\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cArsenal\u2019s interest is genuine. Mikel Arteta likes him very much. There is contact between me and Arsenal, but their focus right now is to win the league. From there, everything will start moving,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>However, Africafoot have revealed that Barcelona have entered the race, while Kofane as interest from Chelsea, Newcastle, Brentford and Bayern Munich.<\/p>\n<p>Leverkusen are not under pressure to sell, but could cash in if a big offer is received, having missed out on Champions League qualification.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Read \u2013\u00a0Arteta praised for \u2018stamping identity\u2019 on Arsenal after Premier League title win<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>See more \u2013\u00a0The best of social media as Arsenal win the Premier League<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong>Follow the Football Faithful on Social Media:<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Facebook | Instagram | <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FootyFaithful_\">Twitter<\/a> | YouTube | TikTok<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><script async src=\"\/\/www.tiktok.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Barcelona have joined Arsenal and Chelsea in expressing \u2018concrete interest\u2019 in Bayer Leverkusen striker Christian&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}