Moussa Dembele held talks with Manchester United in the summer but where will the Celtic striker actually end up?
All eyes were on Moussa Dembele as the striker returned to the club where he spent eight years as Celtic travelled to face Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League on Wednesday.
And in an otherwise humiliating night for the Scottish Champions, who followed up their 5-0 thrashing by PSG at Parkhead with a 7-1 beating in the French capital, Dembele at least made his mark in a positive sense.
The 21-year-old opened the scoring inside a minute at the Parc des Princes – giving Celtic some short-lived reason for optimism before the star-studded hosts turned on the style.
But the worry for The Hoops is that Dembele has only one more Champions League game left in his Celtic career. Manager Brendan Rodgers admitted to The Scotsman that the former Fulham youngster is likely to make the next step at the end of this season.
And now Le Parisien (22nd November, page 19) is reporting that there is a very real chance that Dembele could leave in 2018 – though only for a club who could offer him a genuine opportunity to progress his career.
This comes after L’Equipe (22nd November, page 6) reported that Dembele had held talks with Manchester United in the summer, while Celtic were forced to fend off August approaches from Premier League duo Swansea City and West Ham.
It appears unlikely that Dembele would swap Champions League football and league titles at Celtic to struggle at the bottom end of the Premier League. But the prospect of joining a Manchester United side beginning an exciting new era under Jose Mourinho would carry a far greater appeal.
At Old Trafford, playing alongside Romelu Lukaku, Marcus Rashford and co would surely take Dembele’s career to the next level.
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