Will this be the summer Riyad Mahrez finally gets his move away from Leicester City? We’ll have to wait and see about that, but if a Tunisian manager is to be believed, the Foxes are already looking for a replacement.
Speaking to Mosaique FM on their show Forum Sport, Yamen Zelfani revealed the Premier League club tried to sign Bassem Srarfi from OGC Nice to help compensate for the Algerian star’s exit.
The manager, who the website claim once worked with the Ligue 1 club, explained the 20-year-old was ‘on the verge’ of moving to King Power Stadium, only for it to break down when they started asking for more money.
Srarfi, who joined Nice from Club Africain in Tunisia in January 2017, enjoyed a decent first full season in the south of France where he mostly came off the bench, but still managed to pick up three goals and one assist in 35 appearances.
The amounts discussed between the two sides haven’t been revealed, but it certainly won’t have been in the same ball park as what Leicester City are asking for when it comes to Mahrez.
In fact, we’d be surprised if it was even a quarter of that, just because Srarfi only started 16 games last season and isn’t an established first-team player yet.
We’ll keep an eye to see if anything else comes out about this, but, if true, it appears the Foxes are looking for the ‘next Mahrez’ rather than a direct replacement for their star forward.
