The sun is shining in south London and it’s not summer proper yet. Real Betis defender Chadi Riad is on his way to Selhurst and will have a medical this week, as exclusively reported by LondonWorld last week.
The Eagles have agreed to a stunning £14million deal for the 20-year-old who will provide intense competition for both starters Marc Guehi and the ever-improving Joachim Andersen.
He has two caps for his country Morocco already and joined Betis from Barcelona last summer. At Barcelona, he was one of the highly-rated youngsters in their academy.
Last week LondonWorld reported that the 20-year-old had turned down advances from Tottenham to move to Selhurst and his medical will seal a stunning move after Palace, the player and Betis agreed on a deal.
Not many teams in Europe ended the season in the kind form Crystal Palace did, winning all their last five games, including one at Anfield against Liverpool and beating Newcastle and Champions League-chasing Aston Villa at Selhurst.
There is no doubt they would have been chasing down a top-eight finish if there were more games left in the season. The big threat to their form will be other teams chasing down their star players with Michael Olise and Eberechi Eze all linked to Manchester United this summer.
Marc Guehi who has been named in England’s large Euro squad is also another player who is driving interest amongst the big teams in the league and Europe, but the question will be, do they move to a club where they are not guaranteed playing time or stay to build what is now feeling like a brilliant project in south London.
