Transfer
Chelsea have agreed a deal with Crystal Palace for defender Maxence Lacroix; the 26-year-old joined the Eagles from Wolfsburg in 2024, helping them win the FA Cup and UEFA Conference League
Friday 24 July 2026 09:23, UK
Chelsea have agreed a deal with Crystal Palace to sign Maxence Lacroix.
The 26-year-old defender has given permission to finalise the transfer. Palace were seeking around £55m in negotiations given the fee Tottenham paid for Jan Paul van Hecke from Brighton.
Sky Sports News understands Chelsea have given Palace the chance to discuss signing one of their defenders available for transfer during talks.
Why do Chelsea want to sign Lacroix from Palace?
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There has been interest from other clubs in Axel Disasi, Trevoh Chalobah and Benoit Badiashile.
Palace and Chelsea have a good relationship and they have done deals for players such as Chalobah and Ben Chilwell in the past.
The Eagles have been concentrating on Augsburg centre-back Chrislain Matsima. However,Sky Sports News understands they are now prepared to walk away from the deal, having become frustrated with the speed of negotiations.
Palace have been interested in several centre-backs since the January window when Marc Guehi was sold to Manchester City.
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Among those have been Toulouse's Charlie Cresswell, Lyon's Ruben Kluivert and Trabzonspor's Chibuke Nwaiwu, who is also of interest to Fulham.
Chelsea's key summer business so far
In
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Marco Palestra - Atalanta, £43m
Denner - Corinthians, £8.7m
Dastan Satpaev - Kairat Almaty, £2.1m
Emmanuel Emegha - Strasbourg, undisclosed
Morgan Rogers - Aston Villa, £117m
Out
Marc Cucurella - Real Madrid, £51.8m
Andrey Santos - Man Utd, £50m
Tyrique George - Everton, £24m
Jimmy-Jay Morgan - West Brom, £4m