Italian report: Celtic-linked Omar Colley's Sampdoria departure is inevitable

By David Walton

November 17, 2020

Celtic-linked Omar Colley’s departure from Sampdoria in the near-future is “inevitable”, reports SampNews24.

Celtic have been reported with an interest in the Gambian international over the summer. Sky Sports reported that the Hoops had actually enquired about the centre-back’s availability, but nothing came of it after the Hoops had strengthened with the addition of Shane Duffy.

However, things look to have taken a nasty turn for Colley with Serie A side Sampdoria this season. He’s only been given three outings against Juventus, Benevento, and Salernitina respectively. Outside of those games, Claudio Ranieri has placed his out-of-favour centre-back on the bench.

And SampNews24 reports that a sale for Colley looks both “obvious” and “inevitable”. They also state that Sampdoria did everything they could to get Colley off the books in the summer.

But there’s a potential downside if Celtic want to go down this route. Sampdoria don’t appear to be budging from their big-money fee that they reportedly want for the Gambian. Sky Sports reported in the summer he could cost as much as £10m, and that’s backed up by SampNews24.

Colley looks too expensive for Celtic’s January action plan

It could easily be the case that we strengthen at the back in January. Should Duffy continue to worry us whilst the likes of Chris Jullien and Hatem Elhamed struggle for consistency with their fitness, you could hardly blame the club for looking to strengthen.

But Colley just appears to be in a bracket in terms of his transfer fee that just isn’t viable for Celtic. We can’t seriously justify splashing out an eight-figure fee on another centre-back when we still have other options or targets available.

It also just simply wouldn’t fit into Celtic’s transfer way of thinking either. If the Hoops are going to splash out a significant amount on a player that blitzed their transfer record, then it would be for someone much younger than Colley.

Celtic-linked Sampdoria defender Omar Colley / (Photo by Massimiliano Ferraro/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Whilst the centre-back is only 28 and a young man in the grand scheme of things, Celtic won’t get much of a sell-on boost, and would have to be signing him due to what he can produce for the club on the field alone. That just wouldn’t be like us.

But it’ll be interesting to see whether Sampdoria drop their demands if they can’t sell him for mega-money. After all, they’ll be looking to offset losses by the global health pandemic like many clubs.

We’ll keep tabs on this one in any case.

In other news, it’s been a huge night for a Celtic fringe star who shined on international duty.