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Charly Musonda Jr has closed the Chelsea chapter of his life for the next 18 months — quite emphatically, if you go by his social media activities (with which, as we know, he’s had a bit of history doing silly/immature things) — and he’s dived in a deep end and gone full-Celtic straight away.
He apparently “followed his heart” to have the “honour” of playing for Celtic, to complete his “dream” and play at “the greatest place on earth”, Celtic Park. You’d think Charly Jr was a born and bred Celtic supporter right from the heart of Parkhead. He chose to wear shirt no.67, in honor of Celtic’s famous Lisbon Lions, who won the European Cup in 1967 by beating Internazionale 2-1 in Lisbon as part of a quintuple.
Certainly can’t fault young Charly for his enthusiasm, though he’s setting himself up for quite a fall if the loan move doesn’t live up to expectations.
As has been pointed out by many observers, current Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers, while a big fan of Musonda, doesn’t exactly have the best record in dealing with Chelsea loanees, despite his own prior association with the Blues. Loan moves for Josh McEachran to Swansea City and Victor Moses to Liverpool both were underwhelming, to say the least.
Perhaps to indicate that this time things will be different, Celtic apparently paid no less than €6m in loan fees to acquire Musonda for the next 18 months, and that’s in addition to paying 100 per cent of Musonda’s newly agreed salary (€45k/week). That’s per Belgium’s HLN, who do however dispute Rodgers’ claim that “24 teams” were interested in the 21-year-old.
In any case, hopefully this move will indeed work out as well as everybody seems to be expecting that it will.