{"id":20835,"date":"2026-07-24T08:17:35","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T08:17:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=20835"},"modified":"2026-07-24T08:17:35","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T08:17:35","slug":"chelsea-leading-race-for-world-cup-star-alajbegovic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=20835","title":{"rendered":"Chelsea leading race for World Cup star Alajbegovic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-td-block-uid=\"tdi_79\">\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<p><strong>Chelsea are leading the race to sign \u00a330m-rated World Cup star Kerim Alajbegovic from Bayer Leverkusen<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The West Londoners are readying an offer for the Bosnian teenager, who caught the eye during this summer\u2019s World Cup in North America.<\/p>\n<p>Alajbegovic scored a brilliant goal as Bosnia beat Qatar 3-1 in the group stage to secure progress to the knockout rounds.<\/p>\n<p>The German-born winger only re-signed for Bayer Leverkusen this summer, after 12 months at Red Bull Salzburg. Last season, he scored 13 goals in 44 appearances for the Austrian side.<\/p>\n<p>Leverkusen are willing to consider an immediate profit on the 18-year-old, with The Telegraph reporting that Chelsea are ahead of Juventus in the race.<\/p>\n<p>Xabi Alonso knows Alajbegovic from his time at Leverkusen, with the teenager having spent four seasons in the club\u2019s academy, a period that coincided with Alonso\u2019s tenure.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Read \u2013\u00a0Lacroix and Scott want\u2019 Chelsea transfers as talks continue<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>See more \u2013\u00a0Chelsea eye second hijack on Arsenal for Guimaraes<\/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\u00a0|\u00a0Instagram\u00a0| <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>Chelsea are leading the race to sign \u00a330m-rated World Cup star Kerim Alajbegovic from Bayer&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20835","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\/20835","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=20835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}