Chelsea: Rennes desperate to keep Blues starlet Jeremie Boga on loan next season

Rennes are hoping Chelsea starlet Jeremie Boga will remain at the club on loan for another season. Boga, 19, was an integral member of the Chelsea side that won the Uefa Youth League and the FA Youth Cup last season but was one of many Blues youngsters to leave the club in search of first-team football, signing for Rennes on a season-long loan deal last August.

The Frenchman has been managed carefully by coach Rolland Courbis this season, having started just five games but coming off the bench a further 17 times, chipping in with two goals to help his side climb to fourth in Ligue 1.

Spearheading that rise is 18-year-old sensation Ousmane Dembele. The teenager has struck 12 goals in 16 league appearances for his side, having only made his first team debut in November last year and has inevitably been linked with high profile moves to Barcelona and Bayern Munich.

While Dembele has taken the headlines, Courbis believes Chelsea's Boga is just as talented and hopes he is around next season to show it even more. "Right now he is still learning his trade, and that's logical given his age. But he has already forced his way in to our attacking plans," Courbis told Ligue 1's official website. "As far as I'm concerned, he's in the same boat as Dembélé. He has to continue his development over the next 18 months, two years. I think it'd be good for him and for Rennes if he played another season here."

According to Boga's brother and agent Daniel Boga, the young forward signed a new contract at Stamford Bridge before departing for Rennes on loan, a deal that ties him to the club until 2019.

Dembele meanwhile remains the subject of growing interest from clubs across the continent, having become the youngest player in Ligue 1 history to score 10 goals in a season. However, according to the forward's agent Badou Sambagué, Dembele's mother will be the one to decide what his next move is.

"Fatimata, she will decide Ousmane's future," Sambagué said, according to The Guardian. "When he wanted to leave last summer, his mother told him she wanted him to stay at Rennes and sign his first professional contract. In the end he had no choice."