Local Croatian superstar striker's father reaffirms interest from Chelsea

The Andrej Kramaric story broke last month and it has been an almost daily feature on the pages of various Croatian newspapers (and the virtual pages of their online counterparts) ever since.

As one might imagine, there's hardly any actual solid information around it, and the updates basically keep echoing themselves.  One day, he's set for Chelsea, the next he's set for Juventus or Atlético Madrid or some other random club.  One day he wants to play in England, the next day in Spain or Italy or perhaps even Germany.  One day his entourage travels to London, the next day to Milan, etc, etc, etc...  In fact, we should probably commend his agents and his representatives for drumming up so much attention around the boy more than anything else.  (Well, I say boy, but he will turn 24 this summer, which counts as fairly old as far as young talent is concerned.)

Next up is the classic development of the father getting involved -- one of many developments I look upon with trepidation thanks to the whole Edinson Cavani saga of yesteryear, regardless of whether the father's also acting as an agent or representative and not just a family member with some amount of influence.

"There is nothing new. It's true, there is again the desire of Chelsea and Mourinho for him to come to London. Who knows, maybe he'll end up in the Vitesse or some such smaller club. As far as Atletico concerned, we know that they do not want to offer more than five million."

-Josip Kramaric; source: T Portal via Sport Witness

Well, ok ... though we probably wouldn't sign a 24-year-old just to loan him to Vitesse.  Especially not with the restrictions on Croatian nationals and their UK work permit situation lifting in the summer as well.  If Chelsea are truly interested in Kramarić, it's got to be with a view to make him the third striker behind Costa and Rémy once Drogba retires.   Or perhaps have him be the insurance policy if the Patrick Bamford situation goes sour.

Meanwhile, Andrej has now gone four games without scoring in the league but he still leads all scorers with 21 (in just 18 games) at the winter break.  And it's not even close: the next guy has 12.  In all competitions, Kramaric has scored 28 times in 31 matches.  Impressive.

That being said, the longer this story drags on, the more these claims of Chelsea and Jose Mourinho are starting to look like flights of fancy rather than anything real.  Stay tuned...