{"id":20545,"date":"2026-07-23T16:04:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T16:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=20545"},"modified":"2026-07-23T16:04:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T16:04:16","slug":"chelsea-lead-30m-battle-for-bundesliga-ace-who-could-replace-garnacho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=20545","title":{"rendered":"Chelsea Lead \u00a330M Battle For Bundesliga Ace Who Could Replace Garnacho"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p><strong>Chelsea are \u201cfavourites\u201d to snap up Bayer Leverkusen winger Kerim Alajbegovic, according to reports.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>The Telegraph<\/em> claim that manager Xabi Alonso is \u201centhusiastic\u201d about sealing the signature of the 18-year-old.<\/p>\n<p>Alajbegovic did not make his senior debut under Alonso at Leverkusen, but he would have been aware of him coming through the youth ranks.<\/p>\n<p>The teenager actually left the Bundesliga side last summer, shortly after Alonso\u2019s departure, and he joined Red Bull Salzburg for just \u20ac2m.<\/p>\n<p>However, Leverkusen kept a buyback option, which they triggered earlier this month, and they are now hoping to sell Alajbegovic for around \u00a330m.<\/p>\n<div class=\"sra_unit\"><link rel=\"stylesheet\" id=\"block-sra\" href=\"https:\/\/chelseanews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/snack-related-articles\/dist\/css\/snack-related.min.css?230424-120159\" type=\"text\/css\" media=\"all\"\/>\n<aside class=\"sra-group sra-related-list\">\n<h2 class=\"sra-group-head\">Most Read on Chelsea News<\/h2>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<h2>What do Chelsea fans need to know about the player?<\/h2>\n<p><smartframe-embed customer-id=\"b0c95bc04383cef69c6b47df872135cf\" v=\"f216f6d5d0b6ef819f6e02bf8357cefd\" image-id=\"WmOB0g2CYNCk\" theme=\"iy-theme\" style=\"width: 100%; display: inline-flex; aspect-ratio: 1.4992503748125936; max-width: 4000px;\"\/><!-- https:\/\/smartframe.io\/embedding-support --><br \/>You can read our full profile of the Bosnian international <strong>here<\/strong>but to summarise, he has very little experience.<\/p>\n<p>Alajbegovic has just one season of first-team football under his belt, having made his first appearance at senior level for Red Bull Salzburg against Norwegian side Brann in a Champions League qualifier exactly a year ago today (23rd July).<\/p>\n<p>The forward would score his first goal just a few days later in an Austrian Cup tie against Union Dietach. He ended the season with 13 goals in all competitions.<\/p>\n<p>Alajbegovic received his first senior cap for Bosnia in September last year against San Marino \u2013 a game in which he scored and provided an assist. He was also named in the squad for the World Cup, where he started three times, getting on the scoresheet during the 3-1 win over Qatar in the group stage.<\/p>\n<h2>Garnacho\u2019s departure will pave the way for Alajbegovic<\/h2>\n<p>Aston Villa have agreed a loan deal for Alejandro Garnacho, but it includes an obligation to buy based on easily achievable conditions.<\/p>\n<p>It means that the Argentinian international has effectively been sold less than a year after his \u00a340m move from Manchester United.<\/p>\n<p>Garnacho\u2019s exit has likely prompted the Blues to step up their pursuit of Alajbegovic, who Alonso clearly approves of.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chelsea are \u201cfavourites\u201d to snap up Bayer Leverkusen winger Kerim Alajbegovic, according to reports. The&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20545","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\/20545","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=20545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}