Chelsea make a play for free agent center back Malang Sarr — report

Malang Sarr was born in Nice, joined OGC Nice at age 6, worked his way up the Nice youth teams, made his Nice senior debut in 2016 at age 17, collected over 100 appearances for Nice, and last month left Nice after letting his contract expire.

A bit of strange turn of events, to be sure, but the once very highly rated center back (above Dayot Upamecano by CIES in 2018) is now a free agent, and is garnering interest from around Europe, including from the likes of Barcelona, Arsenal, and, as you might have surmised by the appearance of this story on this blog, from Chelsea.

Sky Sports report that the Blues are “in talks” with the 21-year-old France U21 international, though apparently we’re not looking at him as a first-team signing but rather as a Loan Army warrior. That’s not really that club’s m.o. these days, to sign players just to send on loan, but there’s certainly an opportunity here to sign a potentially very good player for very cheap, who could then try to challenge for a spot in the first-team next summer (since apparently that’s when we’re going to solve our current shortcomings at that position).