Lucas Hernandez has officially told Bayern Munich that he wants to leave the club this summer and join Paris Saint-Germain. Thomas Tuchel’s priorities in the transfer market going into the summer were a defensive midfielder and a striker, but priorities have shifted with West Ham’s Declan Rice looking set to join Arsenal instead of Bayern and Hernandez asking to leave for PSG. Bayern now needs a left-footed center-back to replace the French international, as well as a striker. There is no longer emphasis on a defensive midfielder with the Rice developments.
As far as potential candidates to replace Hernandez are concerned, Sky Sport’s Gianluca Di Marzio has suggested that Bayern has listed Chelsea’s Kalidou Koulibaly as a potential target. The Senegal international transferred to Chelsea from SSC Napoli during last summer’s transfer window ahead of what would be a rather tumultuous season for the Stamford Bridge outfit. He had been with Napoli since 2014, back when he had made the move from KRC Genk and this is not the first time he’s been linked with a potential move to Bayern, as the club has shown interest in him in previous transfer windows.
His current contract with Chelsea runs through June 2026 and, per Di Marzio, they have already rejected a loan offer for Koulibaly from Inter Milan. This puts Bayern in a better spot if they were to concretely approach the Senegalese center-back and they also have the added selling point of the player having previously worked under Thomas Tuchel before the manager was sacked in the fall after a Champions League loss to Dinamo Zagreb.
Koulibaly is currently valuated at 25-million euros, though it would likely require more than that to pry him away from Chelsea, unless Bayern would approach them with a potential loan offer instead of a permanent transfer.