Barcelona\u2019s search for a long-term successor to Robert Lewandowski suffered a fresh setback after it emerged that Emanuel Emegha, the Strasbourg forward, will join Chelsea next summer. Chelsea are believed to have acted early to secure Emegha, whose impressive form in France had attracted suitors from across Europe, many of whom had Champions League football to offer.<\/p>\n
According to SPORT, Barcelona sporting director Deco was one such admirer. The report underlined that Emegha was on Barcelona\u2019s radar as the club plans for life after Lewandowski. The veteran striker is entering the final year of his contract with the Catalans and, although he\u2019s coming off a 40-goal season, it is hard to envision Bar\u00e7a extending his contract for an extra year. Lewandowski will turn 38 next summer.<\/p>\n
Signing a centre forward was not a priority for Bar\u00e7a during the recent transfer window, but the club are closely monitoring a number of strikers with an eye on the future and Emegha was one of them. The prevailing feeling inside the club is that they will hope to land their striker of the future next summer, with the expectation that their financial situation will have improved by then.<\/p>\n
New Manchester United striker Benjamin \u0160e\u0161ko was also said to be on Barcelona\u2019s radar before landing in Old Trafford. With Emegha the latest centre forward to secure a move in recent months, the pool of realistic options appears to be narrowing.<\/p>\n
Names such as Juli\u00e1n \u00c1lvarez have been mentioned around Barcelona, but acquiring a player of that calibre would require a monumental financial effort, and Barcelona haven\u2019t been able to do that in recent times. For now, the club must continue to weigh timing and finances as they search for the next long-term option to succeed Lewandowski.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Barcelona had considered Emanuel Emegha as a long-term Lewandowski replacement before Chelsea next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2805,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1017,190],"tags":[317,1016],"class_list":["post-2806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barcelona","category-chelsea","tag-benjamin-sesko","tag-emanuel-emegha"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2806","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=2806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}