Man Utd and Chelsea targeting Celtic's Josip Juranovic
Stuart Telford
- 10 Aug 2022 13:50 BST
- 3 min read
Manchester United and Chelsea are reportedly interested in signing Celtic's Croatia full-back Josip Juranovic.
United and Chelsea have both been busy in the summer transfer market, and each have dropped serious money on defenders with the Red Devils paying Feyenoord €67 million for Lisandro Martinez while the Blues forked out nearly €73m for Brighton's Marc Cucurella.
Juranovic may not break the bank in quite the same way - the Croatian is rated at €4m by Football Transfers' sophisticated in-house algorithm - but the right-back by trade only joined Celtic last year and still has a contract which runs until May 2026.
🤳 𝕁𝕁 8️⃣8️⃣🍀
✅ https://t.co/Y5KcH1B6UO
❎ Josip Juranovic is not on Twitter#WelcomeJuranovic 📝 pic.twitter.com/zhfo91HfF6— Celtic Football Club (@CelticFC) August 24, 2021
Accordingly, the English giants may have to go up to us much as £15m/€18m for the player, but such a fee is well within both club's budgets.
"Denzel Dumfries and Kyle Walker-Peters are on [Chelsea's] list of options," report 90min. "Chelsea have been doing background work on Juranovic for a number of weeks and are now considering making a move."
Versatile and dangerous
Juranovic can play on either side of defence and last season enjoyed 10 goal involvements in all competitions as Celtic wrested the Scottish Premiership title back from Rangers.
Since first scouting Juranovic, Chelsea have tied club captain Cesar Azpilicueta down to a new two-year deal, while Reece James is perhaps the best right-back in the league. United would love to have so many options at right-back.
Diogo Dalot appears to have pulled ahead of Aaron Wan-Bissaka as first-choice in the position under new manager Erik ten Hag, but the Portuguese failed to convince in the opening day 2-1 loss to Brighton.
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Juranovic has 20 caps for his native Croatia but missed the cut for the squad that made it to the World Cup final in 2018, losing to France.
A Hajduk Split player then, Juranovic subsequently played for Legia Warsaw and only cost Celtic €3m when they acquired him from the Polish outfit last summer.
Atletico Madrid have also been credited with an interest. Wherever Juranovic ends up, Celtic are in line to make a tidy profit.
