GUISEPPE AMBROSINO CELTIC UPDATE: NAPOLI WANT PLAYER SALE
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- Jul 18
- 3 min read
There’s been a development in the story of Celtic’s alleged interest in Italian striker Giuseppe Ambrosino.
With Cremonese tabling an offer believed to be 2.5 million pounds last week, it seemed Celtic had lost their chance of picking up the highly promising Azzurri under-21 star.
Cremonese Deal Not Done, Napoli Could look Elsewhere to Offload Ambrosino, Celtic Yet to Respond
The big development today has been the news that Ambrosino was excluded from Napoli’s pre-season training camp in the North Italian resort of Dimaro. He is one of six fringe players who didn’t make the cut. All of these players now seem set to leave the Italian champions over the next couple of weeks.
Despite supposedly having a bid accepted by Napoli, Cremonese have yet to confirm any deal or indeed even publicly acknowledge their interest in Ambrosino.
Like I said the other day, it’s quite telling that Ambrosino, via his representatives allowed his enthusiasm for a move to Celtic to get out to the public via Sky Sports Italy, yet has shown no such excitement about the prospect of joining the newly promoted Cremona side.
It could be the case that Napoli head coach Antonio Conte has chosen to leave Ambrosino out of his pre-season plans as a way of forcing through a transfer for the player.
Celtic did similar last week, when both Luis Palma and Hyeok-Kyu Kwon were both left out of the first team trip to Portugal. Kwon has been linked with a permanent move to Austria Vienna, whilst Palma is set to join Lech Poznan on loan.
Now, I am making a few assumptions here, but humor me just for a moment.
Let’s say that the reason Ambrosino hasn’t commented on the Cremonese link is because he doesn’t want to go there.
This seems like a fairly logical assumption. However, Cremonese are the only team who appear to have made a firm offer for the player.
Napoli are now freezing Ambrosino out to try and coerce the player into taking the Cremonese deal.
From Napoli’s point of view, it doesn’t really matter where Ambrosino goes, if indeed his omission from the pre-season camp is a sign that he’s surplus to requirements there.
What it does mean though, is that Celtic could, probably get him right now, just by matching or ideally slightly exceeding Cremonese’s offer.
From the player’s perspective, I think that is what he is hoping for. However, there’s been little movement from Celtic’s side of things since initial talk of a loan deal nearly two weeks ago.
Could it be that Celtic would only be interested in a loan with an option to buy?
Napoli will want to cash in now, on a player who only has just over a year left on his contract, and seems very unlikely to renew.
It’s a gamble, but around 3 million for an Italian under-21 striker, with bags of potential, seems like a pretty gamble worth taking in my opinion. We’ll have to wait and see though, if Celtic’s notoriously risk-averse board feel the same way.
Whatever happens, it seems Ambrosino’s next club will be decided in a matter of days rather than weeks.
