Eintracht Frankfurt could sell reported Crystal Palace target Filip Kostic this summer, with board member Wolfgang Steubing admitting that the Serbian international could leave in conversation with BILD.
The question is not whether Roy Hodgson’s increasingly insipid side need a jet-heeled winger with an alarming number of assists to his name, it is whether they can afford him (Sun, 23 February, page 53).
According to reports from Germany, Frankfurt will demand £25 million, even in today’s unsteady market, for a player who contributed to 30 goals in 2019/20 alone.
That, as a divided Palace fan base would happily point out, is £10 million more than chairman Steve Parish has spent on new signings in each of the last two summers combined.
Now, with Bundesliga clubs hit hard by the lack of gate receipts in an era of eerie ‘ghost games’, Frankfurt may be forced to cash in on not just Kostic but goalkeeper Kevin Trapp too.
Yet you would be a brave man to put your money on Selhurst Park being Kostic’s destination, especially amid ongoing links with Inter Milan.
“I do not rule out the sale of Kostic and Trapp. Because the market is difficult,” Steubing declares.
There is one way, of course, that Crystal Palace can finance a deal for an old-school, chalk-booted winger with 18 assists to his name last season.
Unfortunately, that involves selling a talismanic wideman of their own – a certain Wilfried Zaha.
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