Let’s take you back to the summer, Celtic fans, when the transfer window was about to close in France and everything seemed to be going swimmingly until Lyon came along asking for Moussa Dembélé.
The idea of losing the French striker was almost inconceivable for Brendan Rodgers, who had big plans this season for his star man, yet the reluctance to keep an unhappy player in the squad forced the now Leicester City manager and his board to sell one of their prized assets very late on.
Receiving close to £20m for the 22-year-old, Celtic had smartly already invested in his replacement with Odsonne Edouard a couple of months prior, but there could also be another explanation as to why the transfer, seemingly so complicated at first, finally managed to go through.
According to L’Equipe, Pini Zahavi, the notorious intermediary who played a huge part in bringing Neymar to Paris Saint-Germain, helped ‘facilitate’ the arrival of Moussa Dembélé at Lyon.
The French newspaper look at the Israeli businessman in a two page exposé on Wednesday, and explain he’s taking more and more interest in Lyon, with the Celtic man’s transfer just the beginning, as he’s now ‘interested’ in the futures of Tanguy Ndombele and Nabil Fekir.
It seems the Dembélé transfer was just the start of something new for Zahavi, and the Parkhead club just happened to be on the wrong end of his pulling power this time around.
