Arsenal have held direct contact over Bayer Leverkusen forward Christian Kofane, his agent says, with the club\u2019s interest described as genuine as the summer transfer window approaches. The 19-year-old Cameroon international started both legs of Leverkusen\u2019s Champions League round of 16 defeat to Arsenal, a tie that has brought him to wider attention.<\/p>\n
Sky Sport Germany\u2019s Florian Plettenburg identified Arsenal and Real Madrid among clubs \u201cmonitoring\u201d Kofane. Agent Eric Depolo spoke to Daily Arsenal about the player\u2019s situation and the prospect of a move to the Emirates Stadium.<\/p>\n
Depolo is quoted as saying \u201cArsenal\u2019s interest is genuine\u201d and that Mikel Arteta \u201clikes [Kofane] very much.\u201d On negotiations he added: \u201cThere is contact between me and Arsenal . But their focus right now is to win the league\u2014from there everything will start moving.\u201d<\/p>\n
The agent also listed several clubs likely to compete for Kofane\u2019s signature, naming Chelsea, Newcastle, Everton and Brentford from the Premier League, alongside Barcelona and Bayern Munich. Depolo went further, saying \u201cArsenal are in pole position\u201d to sign Kofane, citing factors such as speaking Spanish like Arteta and William Saliba\u2019s Cameroonian heritage.<\/p>\n
Estimates of Kofane\u2019s value vary widely. The original Sky Sport Germany report put an upper valuation at $80.7 million (\u20ac70 million, \u00a361.1 million) for a player viewed as long-term potential rather than a proven impact signings. Depolo has quoted a significantly higher figure, giving an agent valuation of $115.3 million.<\/p>\n
The agent\u2019s comments confirm active interest and contact but also make clear Arsenal\u2019s immediate priority remains on the title race, with transfer movement dependent on how the season finishes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Depolo: ‘Arsenal’s interest is genuine’. He says there is contact over Christian Kofane. this summer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10537,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1163],"tags":[983,1047,1563],"class_list":["post-10538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-transfers","tag-agents","tag-champions-league","tag-christian-kofane"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}