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According to Gianluca Di Marzio, Chelsea and Basel are now getting closer in their discussions about Mohamed Salah. Here's what he had to report:
Update #salah: @chelseafc now is close, discussing again with @FC_Basel: new offer is €15M plus bonus
— Gianluca Di Marzio (@dimarzio) January 22, 2014
My first reaction to this is to be skeptical, as it's fairly late in both Switzerland and England for this kind of update. Add in the fact that Di Marzio doesn't generally do a great job of identifying accurate information, and you've got the makings of a very questionable report.
I'd be surprised if there wasn't something to the report that we're interested in Salah at this point, though how far along the negotiations are would be something I'd be a bit less certain of. Both Basel and the player would seemingly benefit from Liverpool thinking their deal was about to be hijacked, so Di Marzio could easily be getting fed incorrect information with someone else's best interests in mind.
It's also possible that Chelsea are simply moving quickly now that they've reportedly finalized the Juan Mata deal. If that's the case, I'd expect to start seeing links to other players very soon, and possibly some movement with Kurt Zouma.
