Brighton, Chelsea, West Ham United, Atalanta, Juventus, Atletico Madrid... take your pick.

It would seem that Celtic midfielder Matt O'Riley genuinely does have the football world at his feet. The list of potential suitors is growing by the month, week, day, hour and minute as the clock ticks down to August 30 this summer transfer window.

Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers weighed in on the player's worth  last week. The club hierarchy has placed a value of £30 million plus on the Danish international. That's led to many suggesting  O'Riley is not worth those sums of money and the reason is simply because he is playing in the Scottish Premiership.

However, Rodgers firmly counteracted this rhetoric.

The manager said: "It is not just for Celtic but the Scottish game in general for so long the price that has been set on a player has been because of the league and having worked down south for many years and knowing the finances that are involved and the level of players sometimes it's the league that attracts the fee and gets the offers.

"It won't happen in this case. You pay for the player and if you want the player you'll pay for him. I have known young guys in this window who have gone for £20-30 million pounds and we get offers in for the likes of Matt that are with the greatest of respect nowhere near that. We don't have to sell.

"The club does not need to sell but we respect that there will be a point in a young player's career at this club that he may for financial reasons and conditions in his life be able to improve that three or four times over.

"There still has to be a value for the player and not just the league. For us, he is a very valuable player."

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Rodgers knows O'Riley's worth. So too does the Celtic board. It's why they are currently rubbing their hands at the thought of all of the above-named clubs from the top leagues in Europe getting involved in a summer auction for Celtic's prized asset. It is what they desperately crave.

O'Riley will be sold to the highest bidder. Celtic could rake in as much as £35 million for O'Riley which would smash the Scottish transfer record to smithereens.

The current record stands at £25 million and both deals were for Celtic players. Kieran Tierney who was sold to Arsenal back in 2018 and Jota who was coveted by the Saudi Arabian side Al-Ittihad for the same handsome sum in the summer of 2023.

Think about it, though. Rodgers has a point and it is a mightily valid one. Celtic sold Virgil Van Dijk to Southampton for £13 million in 2015. Within three years he had all of a sudden morphed into a £70 million player. Based on geography. That's all. Celtic were not in the English Premier League so they could not command such a high fee for the most valuable asset at the time.

The three highest transfers from a Scottish club - including Calvin Bassey's £20 million move from Rangers to Ajax in 2022 - cost the grand sum of £70 million. That's three separate transfers all costing the same as what Virgil Van Dijk moved from Southampton to Liverpool for. Where's the fairness in that?

Rodgers is desperate to change that mindset. The Celtic hierarchy certainly won't intervene and prevent him from making such proclamations. It's all down to perception as Rodgers has pertinently noted.

"You pay for the player and if you want the player you'll pay for him. There still has to be a value for the player and not just the league. For us, he is a very valuable player."

That was the Irishman's way of saying: 'No Timewasters Please'. If clubs from whatever cash-rich league are serious about clinching Matt O'Riley's signature then they ain't going to lowball Celtic because the Dane plays in the Scottish league. Atalanta, especially should take note of that fact.

O'Riley is a fully-fledged Danish internationalist with two caps to his name. He wasn't an international player when he signed for Celtic for £1.5 million back in January 2022. Kasper Hjulmand who refused to take O'Riley to Euro 2024 has just fallen on his sword so you would expect that cap tally to rise in the fullness of time.

(Image: Craig Foy - SNS Group)

O'Riley is 23, reaching the peak of his powers and has just come off the back of his best season in terms of goals and assists. He contributed 19 goals and 18 assists to the Celtic cause last season as Rodgers guided his side to the Scottish Premiership and Scottish Cup double. He was the club's joint top goalscorer alongside Japanese talisman Kyogo Furuhashi. And those figures are superb statistical returns for any league in European football.

Perception is everything and this is what Rodgers is driving at. The player is of no less value because he plies his trade in Scotland. Had O'Riley been playing in Portugal, for example, then clubs would be falling over themselves to offer ridiculous sums of money by way of transfer fees.

Portugal is not one of the best leagues in Europe as like many others only three times are in with a realistic chance of winning the Liga Portugal every season - Benfica, Sporting Lisbon and Porto. Yet somehow they have managed to convince the football world that the players reared in their academies are worth a pretty penny. Celtic have benefitted themselves from Benfica's academy having acquired Jota for a bargain basement £6.5 million and Paulo Bernardo for £3.5 million only this summer.

One could argue though that the standard and level of competition in Portugal could be commensurate to the Scottish Premiership which is a two-horse race, and has been for the best part of four decades. However, when it comes to selling players the Portuguese know how to do it.

In the top 10 highest deals involving Portuguese players five of them involve switching from a Portuguese club to another for astronomical sums of money.

Joao Felix moved from Benfica to Atletico Madrid for a mind-boggling £113 million in 2019. Ruben Dias made the switch from Benfica to Man City a year later for short of £62 million. Bruno Fernandes quit Sporting Lisbon for Manchester United the same year for £54 million.

Matheus Nunes also made the move from Sporting Lisbon for over £39 million in 2022 and Joao Mario's 2016 transfer from Sporting to Inter Milan set the Italians back the paltry sum of £38 million.

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Rodgers knows the market inside out. Whilst the Scottish Premiership can only dream of recouping the kind of fees that Portuguese clubs can command for their star men on a repeated and regular basis, Rodgers knows that O'Riley is a rare generational talent for Celtic. If Chelsea academy graduates like Connor Gallagher can  net £40 million in today's market then O'Riley's worth and value are not to be conflated.

What has O'Riley brought to the Celtic team? He has brought goals as well as assists. He is a consistent performer. He is a game-changer. He has been pivotal to the club's recent success from the moment he walked through the Parkhead doors in 2022. He is Celtic's best player by a country mile.

All of these attributes should see O'Riley top the wanted list of clubs all over Europe if they are doing their due diligence properly. Where O'Riley chooses as his next football destination and port of call is purely down to the player, his agent and the buying and selling club.

However, Rodgers was bang on with his assessment: "You pay for the player and if you want the player you'll pay for him. "There still has to be a value for the player and not just the league. For us, he is a very valuable player."

Sometimes talk is cheap but not in this instance. The cry from the Celtic hierarchy in the weeks that are left in the summer window will be: 'Let the auction commence'.

O'Riley for £35 million? 

To quote a famous line from the film: 'Lock Stock And Two Smokin' Barrels': "It's a deal. It's a steal. It's the sale of the f***ing century!"