Kounde joins Sevilla’s pre-season tour as Chelsea talks continue

Jules Kounde has belatedly joined up with Sevilla’s pre-season training camp in Portugal as Chelsea continue talks to sign the defender.

The player was initially left out of the group, but Kounde has now decided to join the group.

Chelsea have had a verbal agreement with Kounde since June. He has been admired by Tuchel for some time, having been linked with the Blues in last summer’s transfer window.

Chelsea have signed Raheem Sterling and Kalidou Koulibaly this summer but Tuchel is keen to add another centre-back to his squad having lost Antonio Rudiger and Andreas Christensen to Real Madrid and Barcelona.

Chelsea were interested in Matthijs de Ligt, who has joined Bayern Munich for £68m, and Nathan Ake, who appears likely to stay at Man City.

Ahead of the pre-season friendly against Arsenal this weekend on the second leg of their US tour, Tuchel said Chelsea need to make further signings: “We need a couple more to improve the squad.

Chelsea are in talks with Sevilla over Jules Kounde

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“We finished third last season – there was a gap. If you want to keep your position you need to improve. You can never stand still. Other teams will overtake you. We’ve lost players.

“This is common sense. It’s the dream of every manager to find players from your own league who can adapt so easily. Raheem knows the habits of English clubs and has English team-mates here.

“Kalidou (Koulibaly) knows Mendy from the national team and Jorginho was a big help from Napoli to make the process of integration faster. They are huge players for us. We need to speed things up.”