Gary Neville has raved about the quality of Celtic and Croatia defender Josip Juranovic, who’s reportedly a transfer target for Chelsea.
Juranovic, 27, is an attack-minded full-back that’s had an eye-catching World Cup tournament.
The right-back has played every minute of Croatia’s brilliant campaign at the World Cup, which did finally stutter with a 3-0 defeat to Argentina last night in the semi-finals. It means they’ll compete in the tournament’s third place play-off this Saturday.
Neville raved about Juranovic
Neville, who was appearing as a pundit on ITV yesterday, did single out Juranovic for special praise in the build up to Argentina vs Croatia.
“Juranovic is fantastic going forward. He epitomises the modern full-back. He’s bright. He’s lively,” Neville told ITV 1 (6:40pm, 13 December).
“He’s not just serving the attack, he’s contributing to it… He’s been a real presence in this tournament down that right-hand side for Croatia.”
The Celtic man should enjoy hearing comments from someone like Neville, who had a fantastic career for Manchester United and England as a right-back.
Chelsea speculation
Journalist Ben Jacobs reports on Twitter that Chelsea are one of the clubs eyeing a potential move for Juranovic.
The energetic right-back will be a lot more known across Europe after his World Cup performances, so it’ll be interesting to see what current club Celtic do with him.
He was valued at £15million (Daily Mail) back in the summer. In our view, the Scottish giants would be well within their right to double that price tag, especially because he’s under contract with them until 2026.
The one concern around Juranovic is that he wasn’t even a nailed-on starter every game for Celtic, so clubs don’t want to fall into the trap of spending big on an individual that had a one-off World Cup success.
On paper, he looks like perfect competition and cover for Reece James in Chelsea’s right wing-back position.
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