Premier League side expected to bid for Cork City rising star Franco Umeh

CRYSTAL Palace are set to sign Cork City striker Franco Umeh.

The Irish Independent reported that the Premier League side had scouts watching the forward, who recently turned 18, play in a friendly between City and Dundalk on Friday afternoon in Dublin.

Umeh mightn’t be the only player from Cork to move over the coming weeks as Middlesbrough have emerged as favourites to sign Chiedozie Ogbene.

The Irish international’s future at Rotherham United has been repeatedly questioned this month as Swansea City and Millwall made bids for the forward.

Both attempts to sign Ogbene were rejected by the Millers, who also received an offer from an unnamed Belgian club.

The club has, until now, remained firm on their valuation of a player who is free to leave the New York Stadium at the end of his current contract this summer.

Umeh’s transfer will be of most interest to Cork City as he is an academy graduate who moved on to the first team under Colin Healy.

He originally played for Ringmahon Rangers as a schoolboy and he went on to play for a number of Cork City teams in the Underage National Leagues.

This gave him a platform to break into the Irish underage squads and Umeh quickly established himself as a top prospect due to his goal-scoring run with the Irish U17s and U19s.

He regularly played alongside Mark O’Mahony, who just joined Brighton & Hove Albion from Cork City.

The pair recently joined together to make sure that the Ireland U19s qualified for the Elite Round of the European Championships. O’Mahony netted a hat-trick in their first game of the group against Gibraltar and Umeh scored an injury-time winner versus Wales to secure their place in the next phase of the tournament.

The pair combined their time with the Irish underage sides with the Cork City’s team that was challenging for the First Division title.

Umeh started off 2023 by featuring for the club in a number of preseason games. He has so far been deployed in all different roles in the forward line, including the position of left winger with strikers Tunde Owolabi and Ruairi Keating playing through the centre.

He is experiencing a similar upbringing to Ogbene, who broke out of the U19s and featured for a team that was challenging for the FAI Cup and Premier Division. While City ended the season with just one trophy, the forward received a football education from top players like Colin Healy and Alan Bennett.

Ogbene is now enjoying his best season with England and so far this season he has scored six goals in the Championship and gotten two assists.