Chelsea have been dealt a potential blow in their pursuit of Jules Kounde as the player takes a step towards Barcelona instead.
The Blues appeared confident that they had done enough to finally secure a deal for the 23-year-old when they sent in a £55m offer on Friday but were kept in the dark as Barcelona continued to delay proceedings over the weekend.
Earlier last week, the Spanish giants managed to convince Kounde to join his Sevilla teammates in Portugal for their pre-season tour, much to the annoyance of Chelsea.
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Despite having not been accepted by Sevilla, football.london understands that Chelsea were extremely confident that a deal for Kounde had been reached and that he would become Todd Boehly's men's team signing of the window.
That has now been put into jeopardy, however, as Fabrizio Romano has reported that the versatile defender would be willing to accept Barcelona's personal terms as he remains open to a move to either club. Chelsea themselves had already settled personal terms with Kounde last year and had done the same this summer.
Barcelona have received indications from Jules Koundé’s camp in the last hours: the player would be prepared to accept personal terms proposal. Xavi, also called him. #FCB
Chelsea discussed personal terms with Koundé days ago, but still no green light from Sevilla/player. pic.twitter.com/7oNXcnHa66— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano)
This comes in contrast to the weekend's earlier reports from Spain that Barcelona had given up hope of signing the player and that they couldn't match Chelsea's offer.
As the Blues processed news of Barcelona's interest last week, Boehly is understood to have become involved in the deal once more after he passed the bulk of proceedings onto Behdad Eghbali. This was an attempt to speed up the process, with the knowledge that the longer it went on, the more chance Barcelona had of impacting proceedings.
This will come as a further blow to Thomas Tuchel, who has been vocal in his desire for new players, with the club having suffered a 4-0 defeat to Arsenal in a friendly match in Orlando in the early hours of Sunday (BST) which indicated he has work to do to ahead of the new campaign.
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