Chelsea agree personal terms with Kante replacement

Carlo Garganese

27 Jun 2023 08:35 BST
3 min read

A silhouette of N'Golo Kante over the Chelsea badge on a plain dark blue background — © ProShots

Chelsea have already agreed personal terms with Brighton star Moises Caicedo, with Fabrizio Romano confident a transfer will go through.

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Romano reports on The Residency that Caicedo settled on his salary and contract with the Blues a number of weeks ago, “barring some small details”.

All that is required to complete a move to Chelsea is for a transfer fee to be agreed with Brighton.

This could be a sticking point as Brighton are reportedly demanding £100 million for the Ecuadorian, who they value in the same bracket as West Ham’s Declan Rice.

Chelsea have made Caicedo their top summer midfield target to replace N’Golo Kante and Mateo Kovacic, who are both departing this month.

Kante has moved to Saudi Arabia on a free transfer, while Kovacic is switching to Manchester City as he has one year left on his contract.

Chelsea want Caicedo to partner Enzo Fernandez at the centre of the midfield.

© ProShots - Moises Caicedo has agreed personal terms with Chelsea

Caicedo close to Chelsea in January

Caicedo was the subject of a tug of war between Chelsea and Arsenal in the closing days of the January transfer window.

Both London sides put bids in for the Ecuador midfielder but Brighton rejected all offers.

Caicedo tried to force through a transfer by publicly requesting that he was allowed to leave.

This led to Brighton dropping Caicedo from the squad for a while.

In the end, Caicedo remained put until the end of the season as Brighton qualified for Europe for the first time in their history.

But Caicedo will almost certainly leave this summer for a big club.

Man Utd have also been linked with making a late move for Caicedo in recent days but Chelsea are considered strong favourites to get the World Cup star.