Cagliari Transfer Market: The Sardinians Are Scouting in England’s Serie C

Cagliari’s pursuit of Caleb Okoli shows no signs of letting up. Okoli is keen to return to Italy after his stint at Leicester, a club that has long since forgotten the glory days of the Claudio Ranieri era and has plummeted to League One—the equivalent of Italy’s Serie C: in the first two matchdays, incidentally, they’ve managed to scrape together a measly single point.

The Sardinian club has proposed a loan with an option to buy, while the English club values the defender at around 8 million and would like to include a clause requiring the club led by Tommaso Giulini to remain in the division. Born in 2001 in Vicenza to Nigerian parents, Okoli has already played for SPAL, Cremonese, Atalanta, and Frosinone in Italy, gaining experience in both Serie A and Serie B before transferring to Leicester in England in the summer of 2024.

This isn’t the first time Okoli has been linked to a return to Serie A: as early as last spring, when the Foxes’ relegation to League One was all but certain, his name had been circulating heavily on the Italian transfer market. Among the clubs most interested were Torino (looking for reinforcements following the departures of Maripan and Marianucci) and Bologna, while Milan had also inquired about his situation. His transfer value, then estimated at around 10–12 million euros, has gradually declined over the months, partly due to Leicester’s difficult situation.

Further complicating the defender’s season was a serious muscle injury sustained in training toward the end of last season, which forced him to miss the Foxes’ final four games. That injury inevitably slowed down negotiations during the early stages of the summer transfer window, but it now appears to be definitively behind him: Okoli was a regular on the field during Leicester’s preseason friendlies, as evidenced by his inclusion in the projected lineups for the friendly against Genoa played in early August at King Power Stadium.