Today, there’s another frenzy of reporting over Moussa Dembele. Clubs are hovering.
When he plays for the French Under 21 team tonight there will be scouts from a half dozen teams in the stands. And these guys won’t be from minor players on the European stage, we’re talking the cream here. The biggest names in world football will have their eyes on him.
In one sense this is highly irritating. This level of interest is crazy, and you hope that it doesn’t have an effect on the player. I doubt that it will. Since the hour he signed for us, Moussa has been dealing with a quite incredible amount of scrutiny, first from the Scottish press who wondered who he was and what he could bring to us, and then when he failed to make an immediate impact they were asking why he was in the team ahead of Leigh.
From the minute he scored a hat-trick against the Sevconuts, talk of his leaving us has been relentless, as the media realised we had a star on our hands.
His valuation had edged into the territory of £10 million on the back of that one, sensational, explosive performance. We could have got that the very next day on the back of the match reports and the footage of that game.
But it went stratospheric the second he scored against Manchester City.
Watching the match that night, in a bar in Ibiza, I told the guy sitting next to me that we would never keep the guy for long, but we would net a fortune for him. I knew exactly what the reaction to his performance that night would be, both in the press and in the football world.
And Moussa has only improved since; his performances for the French Under 20’s made their own set of headlines as he proved his immense talent on that stage. He scored two more hat-tricks in Scotland on top of it, and put in a host of other tremendous displays.
There is little doubt that we’ve got a major player on our hands, and the interest is justified.
That interest generates its own kind of momentum.
The news from Italy the other night might not have been exactly grounded in reality – it was speculation at best – but it adds to the general sense out there that Moussa is rated on the continent and could play anywhere. Milan’s name has been added to a global list of club that now includes giants of Spain, Italy, Germany, France and England. He is almost certainly the most sought after footballer in Scottish football history.
Another factor that feeds into the interest is, believe it or not, Virgil Van Dijk.
That he is ready to be sold for a monster fee, following the journey of Victor Wanyama and the anticipated future sale of Fraser Forster, there’s obvious interest in the way our club purchases and develops young players. Patrick Roberts, should he sign for us, will certainly end up back in England at one point, and probably for a major fee.
All of this has gelled, beautifully, at the current moment to make Moussa Dembele one of Europe’s hottest football properties and has conspired to send the potential value of him to insane levels. Those who believed we would struggle to get more than £12 million or so were dreaming; we are a credible club with a record for finding hidden gems, and any club that paid £30 million for Moussa would stand a very good chance of doubling it in short order.
Not a single Celtic fan wants to see Moussa Dembele leave, but there are a lot of us who would take the money if it was on offer and every bit of it was going back into the team. At a time when other clubs are scrambling to sell players before their wage bill becomes untenable and crushes them under its weight we are sitting on a guy who’s valuation could build an entire squad. These really are great times to be a Celtic fan.