Vesper

hopefully Inter buys him, we have a huge brewing backlog of dregs to liquidate

yes, that is why I preface a lot of my CB comments with 'I think Lampard fancies the 5 we have' if you break it down to bare minimum that can possibly be done it yields CF Mertens RW Ziyech only LB probably Chilwell with Emerson out the door nothing else done, hell we may renew the 39yo to be Willy as the only option for Kepa and that Chilwell deal is so not a sure thing we MIGHT take the swap deal, Emerson for Alex Sandro (pretty short term fix as he turns 30 in 9 months) if those 3 are the only moves we make, the upcoming season may be a rough one BUT I am pretty close to resigning myself to that is all we do if we do not upgrade on Willy, that is a potential disaster, as Kepa may (I so hope not) completely self.destrect and Willy is dogshit at his age

shit, that just means another monster club out trolling the market for a great CB now

I think there is a good chance (foolish IMHO) that Lampard rates the 4 CB's we now have (plus maybe even Ampadu) so we end up making no moves but if we do these are the good options atm I highly doubt we go (or even can go) truly WC that group would be Raphaël Varane (would have to involve Kante somehow, and even then probably impossible, as he is the 2nd best CB in the world, after VVD IMHO) José Giménez (this might be a possibility, as perhaps we could work out a deal where we give AM £20m plus Morata for free, so they do not have to pay us for Morata) Kalidou Koulibaly (too old now for what he would cost) Marquinhos (so doubt PSG will sell him) Milan Skriniar (my 2nd choice, but all the other giant clubs want him) Alessio Romagnoli (is who I would go for, but, like I have said for 5 months or so, Mino Raiola is now his agent) Dayot Upamecano << perhaps off the table now so let's forget those Declan Rice has been discussed ad nauseum (and will cost a tonne) so this leaves a shedload of great younger options (my favourites are in bold) Caglar Söyüncü (my 1st choice here, is on target to be WC, but Leicester will want insane cash) Gabriel Magalhães (we have been linked a lot) Luiz Felipe (had a great year at Lazio) Marash Kumbulla (super on the ball, Albanian 20yo) Edmond Tapsoba (exploded onto the scene in the Bundesliga, he made first team despite not playing the whole year for Bayer Leverkusen, he bossed Håland) Merih Demiral (Juve though, although we should say screw Alex Sandro, if you want Emerson, cough him up, lol) Mohammed Salisu (Real Valladolid) very large upside, left-footed Pau Torres (Pep loves him) Unai Núñez (another one Pep likes) Ozan Kabak Ibrahima Konaté (injury has made it hard to judge him, but he has insane upside) Rúben Dias (too expensive) Alessandro Bastoni Gianluca Mancini then some with issues (listed) Stefan de Vrij (if Skriniar leaves, there is zero chance Inter sells him as well, plus he turns 29 in 9 months) Éder Militão (he is for sale, not convinced, he struggled at Real Madrid) Diego Carlos (great on the ball CB, but is very expensive and is 28yo in 10 months) Dan-Axel Zagadou (HUGE player, 1.96m, I think might lack the pace we need) Presnel Kimpembe (doubt PSG will sell him) Issa Diop (too expensive, and I think there are better options) Ben White (deffo not sold on him yet) Robin Koch tall 23yo German, do not think he is elite yet teenagers: Benoît Badiashile Tanguy Kouassi

West Ham star Declan Rice hints at possible future position change https://tbrfootball.com/west-ham-star-declan-rice-hints-at-possible-future-position-change/ Declan Rice has suggested he could change positions at West Ham United in the future – or rather, revert back to a a role he once knew very well. The 20-year-old has quietly established himself as one of the Premier League’s better holding midfield players in the space of the past year. Rice has proven to be an effective defensive shield for the likes of Angelo Ogbonna, Issa Diop and Fabian Balbuena. Before his days as a holding midfielder though, Rice was a central defender. He told the Football Ramble podcast: “It’s a tough one. Because of my ability on the ball, I can play left foot, right foot, I’m big and strong so I can get about. snip Could West Ham's Declan Rice be the centre-back Chelsea need? https://www.thechelseachronicle.com/premier-league/could-west-hams-declan-rice-be-the-centre-back-chelsea-need/ Jamie Redknapp suggests West Ham ace Declan Rice could be switched back to a centre-back https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-7569127/JAMIE-REDKNAPP-Declan-Rice-answer-defence-England.html

Rice has played at CB almost 50 times in the past 5 years.

Rice often played at CB before, and I see him starting there eventually for the English national team, so I do not see it as a shoehorn move, but people are probably going to disagree.

Barca makes the most sense for Alaba, Jordi Alba is 32yo in 10 months, and Junior Firpo has not worked out in their system Real is a possibility, as look Arsenal and Tottenham in talks with Real Madrid to sign Sergio Reguilon https://metro.co.uk/2020/04/29/arsenal-talks-real-madrid-sign-sergio-reguilon-12625888/ snip And the report claims that Arsenal and Tottenham are two of the teams who have asked Madrid about the defender’s availability along with Borussia Dortmund and Paris Saint-Germain. It’s claimed that Arsenal’s interest in Reguilon could be linked with Bukayo Saka’s situation as the 18-year-old has not yet agreed a new contract with the club and his current deal is due to expire next summer. snip Real has Ferland Mendy, but Marcelo is gone, washed up, and they need another LB, although they may move for Saka or Rayan Aït Nouri btw Auba for £25 or £30m is a great price, he has 2 or 3 good years left, and lets us see if Tammy is actually the long term answer

not so much if you look at him as a CB

Raphael Honigstein’s Bundesliga Team of the Year https://theathletic.com/1768666/2020/04/27/bundesliga-team-of-the-year/ Nobody knows how, when and if the rest of the season will play out but few would disagree that the individual quality in the Bundesliga has rarely been higher in recent years. Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, RB Leipzig, Bayer Leverkusen and Borussia Monchengladbach (who are unlucky not to represented in this Team of the Year) could have easily provided three or four different top XIs. These, in a 3-4-3 formation, are the men who won my vote… Goalkeeper: Peter Gulacsi (Leipzig) The 29-year-old did have a couple of dodgy moments in the first half of the season but then quickly improved again to provide silent, stoic excellence between the posts. The Hungary international looks more and more like prime Petr Cech (2004-2008), and not just in terms of his receding hairline. Gulacsi specialises in the unspectacular, keeping goal in a calm, technical manner that isn’t always appreciated fully in a country that likes its No 1s big and brash. The Hereford United, Tranmere Rovers and Hull City old boy has put up some impressive numbers. His shot save percentage* of 73 per cent is identical to Manuel Neuer (Bayern Munich) and Yann Sommer (Borussia Monchengladbach) but he’s vastly over-performed compared with his Bayern counterpart, conceding 3.6 fewer goals than expected (Neuer’s metric was flat). Sommer has proved even more able (or luckier), conceding 6.1 fewer goals than expected, but the Switzerland No 1 is not as proficient as Gulasci when it comes to cutting out crosses or making interventions outside the box. Other qualities are harder to quantify but no less important. Gulacsi is the oldest of Leipzig’s regulars, less than three years younger than coach Julian Nagelsmann; a beacon of experience. And crucially, he’s shown up when it matters. Thanks to him, Leipzig have drawn home and away with Bayern this season and advanced to the quarter-finals of the Champions League. *includes shots blocked by defenders. All stats from fbref.com Right centre-back: Edmond Tapsoba (Leverkusen) Can you be in the Team of the Year having played a grand total of nine games in the league concerned? Yes, you can — when you’ve played them as well as the Burkina Faso centre-back has. Tapsoba, an €18 million (plus €2 million in add-ons) buy on January 31 from Portugal’s Vitoria Guimaraes, has astonished everyone at Leverkusen with the pace of his adaptation and the quality of performances. It only took the 21-year-old four training sessions to find a starting berth in the 4-3 win against Borussia Dortmund, the start of nine-game unbeaten run in all competitions (eight of them wins) for Leverkusen. Peter Bosz’s side, so easy on the eye in possession, have suddenly learned how to defend. It’s not much of an exaggeration to call Tapsoba’s impact on their fortunes Virgil van Dijk-esque. “It’s extraordinary to see a player getting used to a new culture, a new country, a new language, a new playing philosophy and new team-mates this quickly,” says Bosz. Leicester City were unlucky to miss out on him because of problems with a work permit. But the way things are going, he’ll turn up at a Premier League club before too long. Centre-back: Dayot Upamecano (Leipzig) Few people watch football to marvel at central defenders but Dayotchanculle Oswald Upamecano, born in Normandy three months after France won the 1998 World Cup, is one of these rare players who shift the focus of attention from those tasked with scoring to those tasked with denying them. Upamecano is a mountain. No, a mountain range. Immovable. Unsurpassable. A truly magnificent sight. Unbelievably, he’s rather slender and not even that tall for defender but every one of his 186 centimetres (6ft 1in) seems to be in multiple places at the same time. Here. There. Everywhere it matters. By his standards, there has been the odd less-than-amazing performance since the turn of the year, when the €10 million buy from Valenciennes’s academy (via Leipzig’s Austrian Mini-Me that is Red Bull Salzburg) came back from an ankle injury, but there simply isn’t a defender that’s more fun to watch in the league right now. Left centre-back: Mats Hummels (Dortmund) The former Germany international — as Joachim Low would no doubt introduce him — has been somewhat overshadowed by this season’s more illustrious additions at Dortmund: Erling Haaland, Thorgan Hazard, Julian Brandt. But few could deny Hummels’ second spell at Signal Iduna Park has been success so far. The 31-year-old has had a few outstanding performances, especially in the Champions League. He’s helped a notoriously shaky back-line improve markedly when it comes to defending set-pieces and crosses and his passing out from the back remains delightfully insolent. On top of that, he’s struck up a fine partnership with Dan-Axel Zagadou, who makes up for Hummels’ vulnerabilities in defensive transition. Time might be against him as far as changing Low’s mind for what is now Euro 2021 is concerned but there’s still no better, more gifted and cultured German defender out there. Right midfield: Achraf Hakimi (Dortmund) Decent full-backs are hard to come by. It’s harder, still, to find players who can do a fine job on either side of defence and even play as wingers if need be. That’s why the Morocco international, on loan from Real Madrid, has half a dozen of clubs queuing up to take him off the Spaniards’ hands in the summer — if they can’t offer him first time football next season and do want to sell. They’d be crazy do so, however. The 21-year-old is ridiculously fast. He loves to join the attack on overlaps or underlaps, provides assist with thrilling regularity (10 in 37 games this season in all competitions) and scores himself, too. Seven goals speak of his ability in front of goal. A perfectionist coach such as Dortmund’s Lucien Favre would have noted a few positional mistakes without the ball but more experience at this level will lead to better decision-making. Central midfield: Kai Havertz (Leverkusen) The crown prince of German football had a relatively undistinguished first half of the season. Leverkusen on the whole struggled to find balance — there was no Tapsoba then, remember — and Havertz looked short of inspiration without his best football buddy Brandt, gone to Dortmund, beside him. But normal service has resumed since January. The 20-year-old floats through space, dragonfly-style, drifts past defenders with the shrug of a shoulder, sees the killer pass three seconds before anyone else and then plays it, deliciously soft and perfect like freshly-spun cotton candy. Havertz is a dream of a player, capable of playing anywhere in midfield. COVID-19 might make it more complicated for Leverkusen to sell for the €100 million he’s surely worth, “But such a thing is not meant to last,” as Monica Bellucci’s character Persephone had it in The Matrix movies. Not at Leverkusen, at any case. Central midfield: Thiago (Bayern) Almost every Bayern player has bounced back to play at the upper limit of his abilities since Niko Kovac was replaced by Hansi Flick in early November. Thiago, however, warrants special recognition as the gold-plated heart of the champions’ game. The Spain international, 29, plays midfield football at a different level to anyone else in the Bundesliga. Not everyone has clocked onto it yet but this is now his team; perhaps more so than ever before. Left midfield: Alphonso Davies (Bayern) Goalimpact, devised by German engineer Jorg Seidel, is an algorithm for scouting players. In early 2018, Goalimpact predicted that Davies, a 17-year-old then playing for Major League Soccer’s Vancouver Whitecaps, would be a world-beater. It’s unclear whether Bayern were convinced by that verdict when they bought the Ghanaian-born son of Liberian refugees for $22 million that summer, but Davies has certainly exceeded all expectations. In the space of five months, he has gone from fringe player with a habit of overhitting his crosses to the first-choice left-back, deputising so well for David Alaba that the Austrian might never return to his usual berth. “His development has been great,” coach Flick said. Davies, the fastest player in Bayern’s squad, has grown so quickly he must be considered not just the best left-back in the Bundesliga but a one of the most effective players in his position world-wide. It’s a bit of a football fairytale, and it’s only the beginning — he recently signed a contract extension keeping him in Munich until 2025. Right forward: Jadon Sancho (Dortmund) You might have heard of this kid: he’s the youngest player in Bundesliga history to get to 25 goals. Look a little deeper into his numbers, however, and his impact looks even more phenomenal this season. Whenever Sancho touches the ball, things tend to happen, whether that’s his 17 all-competition goals for Dortmund this season, the 19 assists or chances for team-mates. Sancho creates nearly five shots on goal per match for his team, and his combined expected goals and expected assists are 0.71 per league game, according to fbref.com. He is his club’s biggest difference maker, the man who may even win them the championship this season. No wonder Favre can’t afford to leave him out of the starting line-up — unless minor indiscretions like late arrival for training warrant a symbolic slap on the wrist. Opposition defenders have figured out his “tell”: Sancho always raises his right arm before dribbling. Unfortunately, there’s not much they can do about it. The England international is too tricky, too fast. One of the league’s biggest attractions in years. Striker: Roberto Lewandowski (Bayern) Thirty-nine goals in 33 club games in all competitions. Do I need to say more? Even by his own standards, the Polish centre-forward has gone to a different level this season, scoring relentlessly. There is no doubt that he’s vastly benefited from the return of Bayern’s positional game under Flick, especially its steady supply of passes and supporting players into the box. Anyone who saw him toil fruitlessly 50 metres ahead of his team-mates in the depressing Champions League round of 16 exit against Liverpool last season appreciates the importance of a joined-up game plan for any poacher. But you still need to be in the right place, as often as he is. Having missed the last three games because of a knee injury, the Bundesliga’s COVID-19-enforced break may see him wrestle with an immortal soon. Gerd Muller holds the Bundesliga record with 40 goals in a season from 1971-72. Lewandowski has 25 with nine games to go… Left forward: Timo Werner (Leipzig) As an RB player and a forward who likes to, ahem, exaggerate the odd contact by a defender, Werner hasn’t exactly been the most popular player in the German top flight. A few inconsistent spells over the years have only encouraged his detractors. In this campaign, however, the 24-year-old has performed beyond reproach. There’s the superlative end-product (21 goals and seven assists in the Bundesliga) and there’s also the underlying effectiveness. Fbref.com have calculated a value of 0.99 for xG plus xA per match for him. In English: he’s basically worth one goal per game to his side. An elite forward. Some of the credit for Werner’s form must go to coach Nagelsmann, who has come up with lop-sided 4-4-2 or 3-5-2/3-4-3 systems that leaves room for the former Stuttgart prodigy as a number nine-and-a-half/second-striker in the left half-space. That deployment has brought out the best in him. A bit of anger in his belly could have played a role as well: Werner was upset that Bayern never followed through their approach last summer to find an agreement with RB. The champions’ loss is Leipzig’s gain. Soon, it could be someone else’s.

Physically perfect, goal-obsessed Lewandowski is Bundesliga Player of the Year https://theathletic.com/1775688/2020/04/28/bundesliga-player-of-the-year-robert-lewandowski/ Writing about Robert Lewandowski, the most consistent centre-forward of his generation, poses a similar dilemma to the one routinely encountered by chroniclers of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo: what is left to say that hasn’t already been said? A goalscoring machine. A near-indestructible body. A one-track mind bordering on the obsessive. The words have been the same for a few good years now, even as the numbers keep getting bigger. And 2020-21 is shaping up to be his best season ever. Twenty-five goals in 23 Bundesliga games, 39 in 33 in all competitions; he has a realistic shot at breaking Gerd Muller’s 40 goals record from 1971-72, long considered untouchable. Maybe Lewandowski can even fulfil a lifelong ambition to win the European Cup this year. “I still believe that one day, we will play in the Champions League final and we will win it,” the 31-year-old told The Guardian before Bayern’s last-16 outing at Chelsea in February. Plenty of neutrals would have come around to that view, too, after his two assists for Serge Gnabry and an easy tap-in meant Bayern went home from Stamford Bridge with a 3-0 win. Lewandowski injured his knee during that game and was out of action for four weeks, the longest he has ever been injured during his 10 years in the Bundesliga. (Due to the effects of Covid-19, he only missed two league games and should be fully restored by the time the league is scheduled to kick off again in May). His durability is not a coincidence but just reward for a life in asceticism, entirely devoted to physical perfection. His late father Krzysztof was a football coach and judoka, while his mother Iwona was a volleyball player. Lewandowski Snr had the boy practising judo and sent him on long hiking runs but “Bobek” only wanted to play football. A photo in his biography, written by Wojciech Zawiola, shows the eight-year-old at a carnival, wearing a Danish national team kit as a disguise. Iwona recalls Robert teaching their boxer dog Kokusia to play as a goalkeeper (without biting the ball) for penalty practice and outrunning the exhausted dog in races through the woods. From a young age, he was determined to dedicate himself to his craft, eschewing the usual trappings of teenage life, the odd joy-ride without a driver’s licence excepted. Nutritional advice courtesy of his karate-champion wife Anna has been another piece of the puzzle. Lewandowski believes he can play on for another five or six years at this level. “He is one of the most professional footballers I have ever worked with,” Pep Guardiola said. “He eats, sleeps and trains for his job. He’s never injured because he focuses so much on the right diet and proper preparation.” The Catalan was initially not convinced he needed a centre-forward in Munich but soon understood the value of an out-and-out No 9 who can also play a bit, courtesy of Lewandowski’s spell in attacking midfield under Jurgen Klopp at Borussia Dortmund. Lewandowski admits he possesses the same selfish streak that all natural goalscorers seem to be born with. Team-mates at Bayern used to joke that his egotism even dwarfed that of Dutch winger Arjen Robben but he’s not one to stay in the box or on the last shoulder of the defender, waiting for things to happen. He wants to come deep, link up play, make space for others. Without his record-breaking streak of 16 goals in 11 consecutive games at the start of the season, a dysfunctional Bayern would have been a million miles away from defending their title. After Hansi Flick restored positional order and a cohesive passing game, Lewandowski became the main beneficiary of more regular supply routes. On top of that, dressing-room sources have noticed a change in attitude. Having more or less openly pushed for a move to Real Madrid in the past, Lewandowski is said to have become much more of team player off the pitch, helping young strikers hone their finishing their skills. “You can always improve” is his core mantra, if not perhaps quite as much to reach Messi or Cristiano levels. “When I look at those two, I see the mistakes that were made during my youth development,” he told Zawiola with a typical mix of honesty and confidence. A few years ago, he taught himself to take free kicks to increase his chances of finding the net. He cites shots from distance as one of his few remaining weakness but the flip-side to that limitation is his focus on the most promising of finishes, centrally in the box. His underlying numbers are, as expected, elite in that respect. StatsBomb data shows he produces 4.67 shots at goal per game. Just under half of those are on target, and every other shot on target is a goal. “He shoots, he scores” is true for one in five shots he takes. “In terms of efficiency, he’s second among the best-ever strikers of Bayern’s history after Gerd Muller,” his team-mate Thomas Muller told Sport-Bild recently. Gerd Muller scored 365 goals in 427 Bundesliga games, a rate of 0.85 goals per game. This season, Lewandowski has gone past Germany’s greatest striker in terms of the ratio: 313 league matches have brought 227 goals, a rate of 0.72 goals per game. If he does continue at the same incredible figure for another five seasons, beating Muller’s otherworldly career total might just be possible.

Josip Ilicic, the Prince of Slovenia, is Serie A’s Player of the Year https://theathletic.com/1765473/2020/04/24/josip-ilicic-atalanta-serie-a-player-of-the-year/ It’s late July, almost the end of pre-season, and Atalanta’s players are helping to pack up the equipment from a training session in Zingonia. The team’s midfield dynamos Marten de Roon and Remo Freuler grab one of the chairs from the sidelines. It’s hardly a two-man job but Josip Ilicic is sitting in it as if he were on a throne. “I’m the Prince of Slovenia, the Prince of Slovenia,” he jokes as his footmen lift him into the back of a truck. “We do all the hard work,” De Roon quipped on Instagram, his resentment feigned. Nine months later, the Dutchman and his team-mates still have no problem waiting hand and foot on Ilicic. After all, if anyone deserves the royal treatment in Serie A this season, it’s him. You have to bow to his majesty. When the 32-year-old audaciously chipped Salvatore Sirigu from just inside Torino’s half in January, Papu Gomez got to his knees and shined his left boot in appreciation. In Valencia, where Ilicic became the first Serie A player to score a four-goal poker in the Champions League since Andriy Shevchenko, Papu was at it again, gate-crashing his post-match interview so he could plant a big kiss on his cheek. Coronating him The Athletic’s Serie A Player of the Year won’t come as too big a surprise to anyone at Atalanta. “Josip is playing the best football in Italy,” De Roon told Le Cronache di Spogliatoio. “He’s among the best in the world. I don’t want to make a comparison with (Cristiano) Ronaldo but he is at a very high level.” To give you an impression of how high, consider the following: over the last two years, only Lionel Messi and Sergio Aguero have scored more hat-tricks in Europe’s top five leagues than Ilicic, who is neither a striker, nor a player for a big club like Barcelona or Manchester City. In fact, the Slovenian might not be playing at all had he succumbed to the life-threatening illness he contracted before the start of last season. One of the hardest hitting reports about the tragedy wrought by the coronavirus came at the end of March when a crew from Sky News managed to film within the Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo. It’s a place Ilicic has seen from the inside, too. He was admitted as a patient here at the end of July 2018. The former Palermo and Fiorentina playmaker had been suffering from a fever for a while and as the days passed, rather than improve, his condition deteriorated. “He had a neck like a melon,” Atalanta’s coach Gian Piero Gasperini recalled to La Gazzetta dello Sport. While his team-mates were away in Bosnia, the country where Ilicic was born, hammering Sarajevo 8-0 in the Europa League preliminaries, Ilicic underwent a series of tests to establish what the problem was. The results revealed a bacterial infection of the lymph nodes. “The infection frightened us all,” Gasperini said, and it left Ilicic fearing for his life. “Some people who had the same problem ended up in a coma,” he explained to Il Corriere dello Sport. The sudden death of his former Fiorentina team-mate Davide Astori, who passed away in the team hotel before a game in Udine in 2018, understandably made a profound impression on Ilicic. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “When I got sick, I feared something similar could happen to me. I thought to myself, ‘What if I don’t wake up tomorrow? How will I deal with not being able to see my family?’.” Afraid to go to bed, he didn’t think about football, nor did he watch games on TV. His focus narrowed. “I had one thing fixed in my mind: staying alive and being with my family. There was a point where just being able to walk and run like a normal person again would have been enough for me.” Ilicic’s anxiety eased as a course of antibiotics finally took effect. The swelling of his neck reduced and the infection gradually dissipated. He is acutely aware of how lucky he got. “In my case, the infection was limited to my neck. It can spread throughout the body and has done in other patients. If I think about them…” Emerging from hospital a changed man, Ilicic no longer sweats the small stuff. “In the past, I used to get angry about the silliest things — now I’ve learned to appreciate the good things in life.” For Ilicic, that means family. The four match-balls he’s brought home since his recovery are for his two kids to play with in the back garden. It’s tempting to suggest something clicked on the pitch too as one of the most mercurial talents of the last decade in Serie A finally stopped blowing hot and cold. Delio Rossi had a reconnaissance mission for his son, Dario. He sent him to Slovenia to watch Palermo’s next opponents in the Europa League, the winners of Maribor and Hibernian, and as Rossi flew back to Sicily in July 2010, he couldn’t wait for the debriefing. Dario had been blown away by a no-name 22-year-old, some kid called Ilicic who’d scored twice in an emphatic 3-0 win. An agent from Slovenia had flagged him up to Palermo’s sporting director Walter Sabatini — the guy who brought Alisson, Javier Pastore, Erik Lamela and Marquinhos to Europe — but Dario’s enthusiasm really captured his imagination. Sabatini watched the game back himself and called Palermo’s combustible owner, Maurizio Zamparini. “I told him we need to sign him right away,” Sabatini recalled. As it turned out, Maribor had only just signed him themselves from relegated Interblock Ljubljana. Ilicic was staring another stint in the second division in the face when Zlatko Zahovic’s number flashed up on his phone. For an Argentine, it would be a bit like Maradona calling. Zahovic is renowned as Slovenia’s greatest ever player, even if his tirade after the 2002 World Cup — “You’re a prick of a coach and you were a prick of a player,” he told Srecko Katanec, “I could buy you, your house and your family” — is as famous as his presence on the Valencia squad that reached the Champions League final in 2001, not to mention the four league titles he won with Porto and Benfica in Portugal. Phoning Ilicic in his new role as Maribor’s sporting director, Zahovic didn’t want to see him fade back into the wilderness. No doubt he’d heard the stories about Ilicic having an unsuccessful trial with a Moldovan side and how close he’d come to quitting the game altogether. It would have been a loss to football. Zahovic persuaded him to give it one more crack. He organised the transfer from Interblock for €80,000 and all of sudden, Ilicic found himself back in the game. He didn’t last long at Maribor, though. A handful of appearances and that was it. Not because he wasn’t very good. The problem was Ilicic was too good. His fifth and final game came against Palermo and he didn’t disappoint, backing up the show he put on against Hibs with another goal. Sabatini and Rossi leaned on Zamparini some more and Zahovic’s 80 grand turned into €2.3 million in the blink of an eye. It was a bargain for Palermo too who, after narrowly missing out on the Champions League the year before and cashing in on Edinson Cavani, would reach the Coppa Italia final for the first time since 1979 with Ilicic and Pastore weaving their magic. Dawn broke in Arenzano and Gasperini remembers being desperate. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “All our transfer targets were slipping away.” It was the off-season of 2017. Atalanta had just finished fourth back when fourth wasn’t enough to qualify for the Champions League and Gasperini wanted to go again. “We needed a touch of imagination,” he thought. Ilicic was practically off the board, his name all but scrubbed out. Sampdoria had wrapped up a deal with Fiorentina and he was heading to Genoa. But Gasperini hadn’t given up hope. He had coached Ilicic at Palermo and wondered if the prospect of a reunion might be enough to get him to change his mind. “I decided to call (Giovanni) Sartori (Atalanta’s sporting director). I told him, ‘Look, Ilicic is on the verge of signing for Samp. The medical’s been booked. Are you able to speak to him?'” When Ilicic heard Gasperini was interested, the Slovenian turned as quickly as he turns defenders. “He lit up and said, ‘Mister, if you want, I won’t go to Samp. I’ll choose you.'” His decision did not go down well with Samp. They had watched Gasp torment them for years in the Derby della Lanterna. Even after leaving as manager of Genoa, he couldn’t help but get one over their city rivals. From a neutral viewpoint, switching Florence for Bergamo felt like another sideways move in Ilicic’s career path. The big boys weren’t tempted to take a punt even for fee (€5.75 million) that, for them, hardly constituted a risk. He was on the cusp of turning 30 and perhaps the prevailing sense was if he hadn’t already realised his potential, he never would in Italy. Delio Rossi said: “We’re talking about a pure talent but he’s a very lazy player who, in his head, doesn’t think he has to train a lot to play well on a Sunday.” After Fiorentina lost to Milan a few months before Ilicic left the Stadio Artemio Franchi, Paulo Sousa said: “I take players performing at anything below their best as a personal defeat. And if Ilicic isn’t able to do what he did last year, it’s because he’s let himself go mentally. I’m guilty.” A world-beater one day, anonymous the next. Ilicic has long disputed the notion his seasons were as up and down as the Tuscan countryside. “This reputation for inconsistency started in Florence where, by the way, I was top scorer for three years. And if I was inconsistent, when I’m a 10 or a midfielder, not a 20-goal striker, what’s everybody else!? At Fiorentina, I hit the woodwork seven times in seven games. Imagine if the ball had always gone in. You just need a bit of luck.” And the right coach. As we discussed after that unforgettable night in Valencia, Gasperini’s man-management — pretending not to hear Ilicic when he asks to be taken off or making him think he will when in fact he won’t — is one of the reasons behind the belated blossoming of a unique talent. “I’m really privileged to get to work with him,” Slovenia international Jure Balkovec tells The Athletic. “I don’t know how to describe it because every training session is a joy.” As a left-back, Balkovec knows the conundrum every defender faces when Ilicic is cutting in from the right-hand side. “If you give him a little bit of space, even just for a second, when it’s one-on-one, even if you know he’s left-footed… as with Arjen Robben, when everyone used to say show him onto his other foot and he always went with his left and found the space to shoot, it’s the same with him. Even if you know he’s left-footed, he’ll somehow find a way to open up space for his left foot.” His skill as a dribbler is unusual for someone of his size. Ilicic is 6ft 3in and, as De Roon once commented: “Messi is small and quick. (Josip) can change direction like him but he stands at 190cm.” At every international get-together, Balkovec tries to soak up what he can from Ilicic. He takes free-kicks for Empoli whenever there is a foul on the right-hand side and his desire for self-improvement has led him to stay back after training with Slovenia to practice with Ilicic. “I remember one time, out of six, he scored five goals. Even (Jan) Oblak couldn’t save them. I scored two or three and Josip joked, ‘Maybe I’ll let you take one in the game’.” For Balkovec, Ilicic has the best technique of any Slovenian player ever. “I remember Zlatko (Zahovic),” he says. “I was still very young but little things, I remember. Maybe, from this point of view, it’s difficult to tell. Still, Zlatko managed to score a lot more goals and this is an advantage. But maybe from the point of view of flair and skill, for me, Ilicic is better.” Lobbing a keeper from 50 yards, as Ilicic did against Torino, ordinarily makes the goal of the season list. But Ilicic wasn’t all that impressed by it. “They were badly-positioned,” he observed. “I kicked it and that was it. It was more luck than skill.” As goals go, he continues to judge everything by the Maradona-esque solo effort he scored against Samp in his Palermo days, the one where he dribbled from inside his own half, slaloming past four defenders and slotting home. His standards are impeccably high but when a highlights reel of Ilicic’s career is cut, there will be plenty of moments from this season. The braces, the hat-tricks, the poker. The back-heeled goals, the volleys on his “weaker” foot and my personal favourite the Jedi-like feint that sent Lecce’s goalkeeper and three other opponents the wrong way in another game in which Atalanta scored seven. Ilicic has scored and assisted 20 times in 19 starts this season. He has dominated. Ilicic isn’t just the Prince of Slovenia — he is the undisputed King of Serie A.

Drogba and destiny: From Stamford Bridge boos to Chelsea’s greatest https://theathletic.com/1765455/2020/04/24/chelsea-didier-drogba-champions-league-mourinho-penalty/ Walking from the halfway line to the penalty spot at the Allianz Arena to take the most important kick of his life, Didier Drogba was still weighing up his options. He briefly contemplated surprising Bayern Munich goalkeeper Manuel Neuer with a Panenka, before dismissing it as too risky. He then decided on a whim to shorten his traditional penalty run-up to just two steps, to minimise the possibility of the giant German guessing where he would put the ball from his body language. Drogba had no plan for the moment he knew would define his Chelsea legacy, and yet he had no doubt in his mind. “I told myself something that I have been telling myself since I was a young boy,” he recalled in his autobiography. “’You love being in this position. If you score, we win. If you miss, you miss. But you love that responsibility.’ It’s true, I loved it, and although I sometimes missed, I scored much more often than not. “It’s more difficult for a goalkeeper to save than for the player to score, so the odds were definitely in my favour. Plus, I just felt the script had been written. When it’s yours, it’s yours, nothing anyone can do. On another day, I might have been stressed. On this day, I felt strangely calm. At peace.” The resulting penalty went one way, Neuer the other. Drogba’s guiding sense of destiny had lifted Chelsea to the pinnacle of European football — a fittingly spectacular climax to a wild eight-year ride in which he had seized control of so many of the moments that mattered most. Yet the unlikeliest Champions League triumph of this century was also an unexpected fairytale for a man whose Stamford Bridge career had frequently threatened to flame out in less than iconic fashion. Drogba did not always feel like the master of his own fate. By his own admission he “cried and cried” when Marseille accepted Chelsea’s mammoth £24 million offer for him in the summer of 2004, weeks they had given him a new contract. “I felt as if someone had stabbed me in the heart,” he later recalled. “I didn’t want to leave. I was disgusted at having to sign for Chelsea. That may seem strange, but that’s how I felt. I was really down.” Jose Mourinho’s presence at Stamford Bridge helped change his mind. He had pledged to sign Drogba after his Porto side had beaten Marseille in the Champions League a year earlier, and sent his scout Andre Villas-Boas to watch him regularly and keep in touch. Now, backed by the riches of Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, he had the money to make it happen. “I remember clearly Abramovich was asking me, ‘Who? Who do you want for the striker?’ All the big names in Europe at that time… I said, ‘Drogba’,” Mourinho later recalled on beIN Sport. “He said, ‘Who is he? Where is he playing?’ and I said, ‘Mr Abramovich, pay and don’t speak.’” Abramovich and Mourinho both greeted Drogba when he landed at Farnborough Airport on the Russian’s private jet, and Chelsea’s manager put his new signing at ease by addressing him in French. “How are you, my friend?” he asked. “You’re a good player. But if you want to become a great player, you have to play for me. Marseille is a good club, but for you to become a better player, you have to play for a great club, like Chelsea, and you have to play for me.” Drogba’s adaptation to Chelsea was bumpy. He felt constrained by his limited English and underwhelmed by the club’s training facilities at Harlington. He didn’t even recognise John Terry. “I noticed a tall strong guy who looked so young, and who walked and carried himself in such a way that I assumed he was from the reserves,” he recalled in his autobiography. “‘That’s interesting,’ I thought. ‘They’ve obviously brought him over to get a bit of senior squad experience.’ Towards the end of the session, I asked another player who the young guy was. ‘It’s the captain!’ he replied, laughing.” Things were even more difficult on the pitch, where Mourinho was challenging Drogba to transform his game. He had primarily played on the shoulder of the last defender in France and used his speed to run in behind, but at Chelsea he was the target man, often receiving the ball with his back to goal and bringing others into play. The role required him to battle defenders in a league that tolerated a higher level of physical contact than anything he had experienced before. “Everywhere else in Europe, when that sort of foul happens, you go down and the referee gives a yellow card to the defender,” he said. “In England, when you get fouled, you have to stand up and shake the guy’s hand. It makes me laugh now, but at the time, it was a big culture shock and let’s just say that I took a long time to get used to it.” Drogba’s body took a pounding; he missed almost two months of the 2004-05 campaign after undergoing groin surgery, and played in just 55 of Chelsea’s 76 Premier League matches in his first two seasons. Frank Lampard outscored him in both, and even a decisive extra-time strike against Liverpool in the 2005 League Cup final was scant indication of what lay ahead. Chelsea were dominant, but Drogba was not. He was, however, wildly unpopular, even among his own club’s supporters. A series of high-profile diving incidents established him as a villain in the eyes of many. In the closing stages of a match against Manchester City in March 2006, he was even booed by Chelsea fans at Stamford Bridge for going to ground after a tussle with Richard Dunne — having scored both goals in a 2-0 win. Scarred by the experience, Drogba admitted publicly that he wasn’t happy at Chelsea in spite of the team’s success. “It’s not a joke,” he said. “I want to move on and avoid all the pressures and scandals here. I want a place where I can play freely without any drawbacks. You should know what a player goes through with so much pressure. I admire AC Milan but anywhere I go, the Champions League will be there waiting for me. Those things (being booed) hurt my feelings.” Drogba’s troublesome reputation in England at the time stood in stark contrast to the god-like status he had earned in his native Ivory Coast: he had led the national team in an impassioned televised plea for president Laurent Gbagbo and rebel leader Guillaume Soro to cease hostilities in October 2005, minutes after sealing World Cup qualification for the first time in the country’s history. Despite a second consecutive Premier League title under Mourinho, uncertainty about Drogba’s future at Stamford Bridge continued into summer 2006. Then Lampard intervened. “One day, just after the World Cup, I was having a short family holiday in Marrakech when I received a text message from him,” Drogba said. “Strange, because I didn’t remember ever having been texted by him during the entire two seasons I’d already been at Chelsea. I looked at the message, and I remember it to this day: ‘Hi DD, I hope that you’re staying, because we have to win the league together, and we have to win the Champions League together!’ I just stared at the phone. “That was the day that freed me, gave me wings, allowed me to show what I was capable of. The need to feel wanted, loved and valued by others has always been a vital motivating factor for me, and that single message was the catalyst that I needed for my career at Chelsea to take off.” Drogba scored 33 goals across all competitions in the 2006-07 season, more than he had managed in his first two years at Chelsea combined. His improvement covered both for the departure of Hernan Crespo and the struggles of Andriy Shevchenko, acquired from AC Milan for £30.8 million at the urging of Abramovich the previous summer. A resurgent Manchester United claimed the title, but he underlined his growing big-game prowess by scoring the winner in a tight FA Cup final. “Extra time began, and I started to have cramp,” Drogba later said. “This was not good. I ran over to the side of the pitch and called to the manager, ‘You need to make a change because I can’t run any more. I’m done.’ He was having none of it. ‘No, no. You don’t need to run. Just stay there, just stay there. You will score. Just focus. Just one ball and you will score!’” In the midst of Chelsea’s celebrations at Wembley, Drogba ran to the dressing room and interrupted Mourinho on the phone to his wife in order to make sure he lifted the trophy with his players. At the time, Drogba’s bond with Mourinho was stronger than the connection he felt to Chelsea. Their parting embrace following Mourinho’s sacking in September 2007 left Drogba crying in the first-team dressing room at Cobham. He sought an explanation in person from Abramovich and gave an explosive interview to France Football, which ran the following month. “My decision is taken,” he insisted. “Nothing could keep me here now. I know there’s talk of Ronaldinho and Kaka coming here next season but that won’t change my mind. I won’t go back on this decision. No doubt because there’s something broken with Chelsea. I’ve always had a bizarre relationship with Chelsea. On the very first day, I wanted to leave. It was the same every summer too. But despite that I stayed for four seasons, the best of my career.” Chelsea issued a statement insisting Drogba was still committed to the club, but in a team meeting he declined to offer more than his commitment for the rest of the 2007-08 campaign. The bizarre and fraught sequence of events ended with him scoring the opening goal in a 2-0 away win against Middlesbrough, wheeling away in front of the visiting supporters and kissing the badge. Knee surgery and the Africa Cup of Nations limited Drogba’s ability to contribute under Mourinho’s replacement Avram Grant, though he did score both goals in a 2-1 home win over Arsenal and twice more against Liverpool to send Chelsea into the 2008 Champions League final in Moscow. There, his emotional volatility surfaced again – and changed the course of his career. After unsuccessfully lobbying Grant to pair him with Nicolas Anelka up front in extra time, Drogba’s frustration boiled over. A straight red card in the 116th minute for slapping Nemanja Vidic threatened to become the lasting stain on his Stamford Bridge legacy, particularly in light of Chelsea’s subsequent defeat to United in an agonising penalty shootout. Drogba’s preparations had been clouded by the news that his grandmother was in hospital in Ivory Coast, and on the verge of dying. Abramovich granted the striker use of his private jet to return to his homeland and say goodbye, but not before Drogba made a promise to the Chelsea owner’s crying son Arkadiy in the dressing room: “One day, I will win the Champions League for you.” The road from Moscow to Munich had the twists and turns of a rollercoaster, and no other Chelsea player lived the journey quite so intensely. At the end of referee Tom Henning Ovrebo’s night to forget at Stamford Bridge in the 2009 Champions League semi-finals, the lasting image that accompanied Andres Iniesta’s last-minute winner for Barcelona was Drogba, wide-eyed with fury in flip-flops on the touchline, shouting: “It’s a fucking disgrace.” By then he had navigated another sliding doors moment, having been informed by new manager Luiz Felipe Scolari that he was surplus to requirements in January 2009. There was even talk of a swap deal with Inter Milan for Adriano, only for Abramovich to inform Drogba that no such move would be sanctioned. Premier League rivals must have cursed their luck. Even in his less prolific scoring stretches, Drogba had grown into a striker uniquely feared by opposition centre-backs for his blend of strength, speed, technical ability and intelligence. From the 2006-07 season onwards he had become the bully rather than the bullied, with Arsenal — and Philippe Senderos in particular — his favourite victims. All in all, he scored 13 goals in 15 career matches against Arsenal across all competitions. William Gallas, one of Drogba’s closest friends at Chelsea, gained a new appreciation for the Ivorian after leaving Stamford Bridge to join Arsenal in 2006. “I was used to seeing him in training, but you know how it goes: you’re never going at 100 per cent on the training pitch,” he said. “So I never really understood why Senderos would just go missing in every match he played against Didier. But when I played against him myself in the Premier League with Arsenal, then I understood. “He had something about him, a power I’d never sensed as a team-mate, an aura I had never seen before. Facing that, you just shit yourself. He was so intimidating that it rattles you.” Drogba’s aura reached its peak in Chelsea’s historic Double-winning 2009-10 campaign. He scored 29 goals in 32 Premier League appearances, claiming the Golden Boot award despite missing the entire month of January due to Africa Cup of Nations commitments. “It was a really special year when I felt fulfilled, professionally and personally,” he later said. “My body felt good, my football felt easy.” Robert Huth was Drogba’s team-mate at Chelsea from 2004 to 2006, but his lasting memory of the Ivorian comes from a visit to Stamford Bridge with Stoke City for an FA Cup quarter-final in March 2010. “He played by himself up front,” he tells The Athletic. “For the first ball he always comes across your left or right shoulder to win the header, and within the first two minutes I was lying on my back after being absolutely smashed by him. “I knew he had it in him but he was loving it — and not only that, he did it to all four of us. He bullied the whole back four by himself. It was a very humbling 90 minutes. I remember looking up as he was jogging off, and I was on my arse thinking, ‘Oh my god, what happened here?’ Usually, it was the other way around. “It was 90 minutes of hell. He was annoyingly good, because if you dropped off he would just come short, get the ball and run at you. If you got tight to him, he would do it the other way. You really had to be at the top of your game against him. In terms of Premier League strikers, he’s probably the No 1 I’ve played against.” Jamie Carragher fared better than most against Drogba in their 26 career meetings — success he attributes to Liverpool’s broader approach. “The rule was: don’t rile Didier,” he wrote in a Telegraph column in 2018. “When he was angry he seemed to play even better. If his temper was up he was like the Hulk, ploughing through everything in his path, impossible to knock off the ball, a real force of nature. “Looking back I think Drogba changed perceptions about what a striker could do and the way in which a team could be shaped. Many times he did the job of two players and it allowed his managers at Chelsea to change the team around him.” Drogba considers Rio Ferdinand and Vidic the most difficult opponents he faced. When the Serb was asked by FourFourTwo magazine in 2016 whether the Ivorian or Fernando Torres gave him more trouble, he didn’t hesitate. “Drogba was tougher,” he said. “Torres always created a chance to score, but Drogba was on you for the full game.” Part of the rationale to Chelsea signing Torres for £50 million in January 2011 was that Drogba could no longer be relied upon to lead their attack for an entire season. Their belief was strengthened by the Ivorian contracting malaria in the months prior, and he was expected to assume the role of elder statesman in the squad. His personality and big-game impact had already seen him gradually become part of the leadership group in the managerial flux that followed Mourinho’s departure. Villas-Boas returned to Stamford Bridge the following summer tasked with accelerating the transition, and Drogba spoke up against his style of play in a team meeting as the 2011-12 season threatened to unravel. When the Portuguese was dismissed and replaced by Roberto Di Matteo in March 2012, he again took the opportunity to make his feelings known to the group. “I could have left in January, but I’m still here,” he said. “Why? Because I believe we have a chance to win the Champions League. Maybe I’m wrong and we won’t, but I will do everything to win it. “I have been here for eight years now, and when they put me on the bench, I don’t complain. So if I see a guy who is complaining because he’s not playing, or something isn’t happening for him, he will have a problem with me. If you’re not happy because you’re not playing, go and see the manager. But between us, the players, we want to see happy people, we want to enjoy our football, so let’s try to win the Champions League.” His influence was felt throughout Cobham. He had gone out of his way to introduce himself to a new signing, Thibaut Courtois, back in the summer of 2011, and the goalkeeper wasn’t the only one. “I met Didier when I was still thinking about which club I was going to join,” Nathan Ake tells The Athletic, recalling the period after he decided to leave Feyenoord in his youth. “I was with my father (Moise) at the training ground, looking around and he was training outside. He was a hero for both of us because he played for Ivory Coast (where Moise is from). We were both a bit starstruck, but he came over to us and was very nice. He talked to us for a little bit. I hadn’t made my mind up before then, but after that my decision was quite easy! He told me, ‘If you want to be at a big club and win trophies, then join us.’” On the pitch, the next few months yielded the most impactful football of Drogba’s career. His bullet header sparked Chelsea’s fightback against Napoli in the Champions League round of 16 and then, within the space of three days in April, he netted the opener against Tottenham in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley and scored the winner at home to Barcelona, both with his left foot. The goal against Spurs in particular — controlling a Lampard pass on his chest, rolling Gallas and lashing an astonishing volley into the top corner — underlined the partnership that had been fundamental to Chelsea’s success; he and Lampard combined for 36 Premier League goals, more than any other duo in the history of the competition. “After training, we would often stay behind for five, 10 or even 20 minutes, working in front of the goal, trying to put the ball in the net by developing a partnership where each of us instinctively knew where the other one was going to be, or what he was going to do next,” Drogba said of Lampard. “Frank worked and worked, as did I, and we pushed each other constantly to become better and better players. “Like me, he’d had to work really hard throughout all his career to reach the level he did, so we had similar mentalities and we instinctively understood each other. Our success hadn’t come easily, and we both knew that talent was never enough; hard work could beat talent. That work ethic is one of the many reasons why I have so much respect for Frank, and why I feel honoured to have had such an amazing partnership with him at Chelsea.” They combined again for Drogba’s winner against Liverpool in the 2012 FA Cup final – his eighth cup final goal for Chelsea. His ninth, that towering extra-time header against Bayern Munich to send the Champions League final to penalties a fortnight later, will always be the most famous. “As I ran to the touchline and sank to my knees to celebrate, I was in a complete trance,” he recalled in his autobiography. “I’d been speaking to God for many minutes now, begging him, ‘If you really exist, show me, show me!’ So when I scored, all I could do was thank him over and over again, raising both index fingers up to the heavens, as a way to say, ‘Why, why, why? Why had he shown me?’ I had asked — and I had received. It was unimaginable, unhoped for, and completely inexplicable.” Drogba’s faith had fed his belief even as it was tested, by the penalties he conceded against Barcelona and Bayern and by the setbacks Chelsea endured. When it came time to face Neuer for one final time with the Champions League on the line, he was convinced that just as destiny had been against his side in 2008, so it was with them now. In the celebrations that followed, Drogba was the star of the show as he directly addressed the cup with the big ears. “Why have you avoided us, eluded us, for so long?” he asked. “Why have you punished us so much? For all these years you have flirted with us, tempted us, then run away. We thought you would come to us at Anfield twice, but you did not listen. “Then in Moscow, you made us believe you were ours but turned your back, refused to let us touch you. Against Barcelona, again, you tortured us, made us want you even more, made it even harder. And even tonight, you hurt us first. Made us suffer. Made us fear it would be the same again, the late goal, the penalty kick, until the end. And now, at last, you belong to us.” When he finally left Chelsea in 2012, Drogba’s legend was unassailable; in a poll of supporters conducted that summer, he was voted the club’s greatest-ever player. When he returned to reunite with Mourinho two years later, it was to play a smaller role in creating the conditions for a new cycle of silverware at Stamford Bridge. “When he came back, I told him, ‘You are not No 1 any more but I need you to help me with the team, with the more experienced players, with (Eden) Hazard, with Willian, with the young guys,’” Mourinho said. “He was phenomenal again. There are players who, with their personalities, are important from day one of their career until the end.” Ake agrees his influence had not diminished: “In his second spell, he was still a big leader. Everyone would listen to him. Whether he was playing or not, he was always trying to get positivity in the team. He still played a massive part that season. He gave everything. He wanted to make sure the standard of training and in games remained high. It was good to have him back for that year.” Drogba’s biggest contribution to Chelsea’s future success had been made a few weeks after his departure in 2012: he got countryman Gervinho to call up Hazard, his Lille team-mate, and then pass him the phone to pitch Chelsea to the Belgian, who had his pick of elite European clubs. “I was flattered,” the winger later said. “He was maybe the best striker in the world.” A fourth Premier League winners’ medal was his reward, coupled with a few more scattered flashes of the old magic along the way: an opener against United at Old Trafford, a goal in a 3-0 rout of Tottenham and, at the end of April, a crucial equaliser away to Leicester. For the second time, he got to say goodbye on his terms, carried off the Stamford Bridge pitch by his team-mates against Sunderland on the final day. His parting message on the tactical board at Cobham read “Blue till I die”, accompanied by his signature in permanent ink. He has been a fairly frequent visitor to Stamford Bridge since — most surreally in December 2015, when he sat in Abramovich’s box with Guus Hiddink and observed Chelsea supporters abusing their own players in the wake of Mourinho’s second sacking. But he has so far resisted any offers to return in a more permanent and formal capacity, even as his old team-mates Lampard, Petr Cech, Ashley Cole and Joe Cole have been brought back into the fold. That is partly because Drogba has long since abandoned any thought of a career in coaching or management. His sense of higher purpose has driven his work with the charitable foundation that bears his name and led him to enrol in UEFA’s Executive Master for International Players course, alongside the likes of Florent Malouda, Andrey Arshavin and Kaka. He is interested in the bigger picture of football and plans to run for a position with the Ivorian Football Association. “I had an offer to stay at Chelsea where everything would be perfect and conditions are met,” he said in December. “But I want to help Ivorian football because I love it. “I am a leader, and my vision is bigger than just the simple role of being a coach. A coach has an impact on a club — but I want to have an impact on an entire nation.” But even if he continues to tread a separate path, Drogba’s influence will continue to be felt at Chelsea. Tammy Abraham’s celebration of his winning goal against Arsenal in December, running to the Emirates Stadium corner flag with arms outstretched like his boyhood idol, underlined just one of the many ways that his legacy will live on. Perhaps one day when they build a statue of Drogba outside Stamford Bridge, that will be the pose. Or perhaps it will be him standing over the penalty spot in Munich, certain of his destiny.

PL Team of the Year: Which Henderson did our writers pick more often? https://theathletic.com/1745218/2020/04/26/premier-league-team-of-the-year-de-bruyne-trent-van-dijk-mane/ Who would be in a Premier League Team of the Year as it stands? We asked our writers — with the only rule being a maximum of three players from one team… Oliver Kay A Premier League team of the season — this season — with a maximum of three Liverpool players? That’s difficult. There could easily have been seven or eight. But an unexpected challenge, having agonised over which three from Anfield to go for, was to apply the same restrictions to Leicester City. Kasper Schmeichel? Ricardo Pereira? Jonny Evans? Caglar Soyuncu? Ben Chilwell? Wilfred Ndidi? And that’s just their back six. Manchester City have more points — and a genuine Player of the Year contender in Kevin De Bruyne — but Leicester would have more candidates for a team of the season, particularly in defensive positions. That surfeit of Liverpool and Leicester contenders makes it more straightforward to select Dean Henderson in goal. The standard of goalkeeping has been good — not just Alisson and Schmeichel, but Vicente Guaita, Bernd Leno, Nick Pope and Martin Dubravka and others — but Henderson’s contribution at Sheffield United has been immense. A reliable shot-stopper, he has done his long-term hopes with his parent club (Manchester United) and country (England) the power of good. Because the standout full-backs and wingers all play for the same club, I’ve compromised by ditching the wingers (sorry Mo, sorry Sadio) and going for a 3-5-2 formation instead, so a three-man central defence of Chris Basham, Virgil van Dijk and Soyuncu. The wing-backs were so difficult. Again it comes down to Liverpool and Leicester. I ended up opting for Trent Alexander-Arnold and Chilwell, but Pereira and Andy Robertson have both been excellent too. It really was a tough call. Midfield was easier. There are decent cases for Jack Grealish and Georginio Wijnaldum, but I’ve gone for Jordan Henderson, Ndidi and De Bruyne, three players with different qualities whose level has barely dropped all season. That leaves just two spaces in attack. The first of them goes to Raul Jimenez. He is a distant eighth in the Premier League top scorers list, but he has been superb just about every time I have watched him play for Wolves. There has been a lot of focus on Adama Traore and Diogo Jota, justifiably, but it must be so much easier to thrive in a team where Jimenez, so unselfish, so intelligent in use of space, is leading the line. For the other place, I was torn between Jamie Vardy, which would mean losing a Leicester player elsewhere, and Sergio Aguero. I’ve gone for Aguero. There has been something of the flat-track bully about his goalscoring record this season, but at his best, in the early months of the campaign, he looked unstoppable. Two of Manchester City’s most impressive victories, away to Manchester United in the Carabao Cup and Real Madrid in the Champions League, have come with Aguero on the bench, which is food for thought as he approaches his 32nd birthday, but if you are looking for a goal on a typical Saturday or Sunday afternoon in the Premier League (remember them?) there is still no one more reliable. (3-5-2) – D Henderson (Sheffield United); Basham (Sheffield United), Van Dijk (Liverpool), Soyuncu (Leicester); Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool), De Bruyne (Manchester City), Ndidi (Leicester), Henderson (Liverpool), Chilwell (Leicester); Aguero (Manchester City), Jimenez (Wolves) Michael Cox The best goalkeeper in the league, in my view, has been Sheffield United’s Dean Henderson — aside from one mistake against Liverpool, he’s been close to flawless. The major problem, of course, is restricting this selection to only three Liverpool players. I’ve used my trio in defence because whereas other attackers in the league can rival Liverpool’s front three, there are fewer realistic options in defence. Trent Alexander-Arnold and Virgil van Dijk feel like obvious picks — and while Sadio Mane or Mo Salah have had better campaigns than Andy Robertson, can you think of another left-back in the league who’s had a good campaign? I’m struggling, so Robertson gets the nod. Jonny Evans, for so long the most underrated defender in the league, is finally getting due recognition — he’s been outstanding this season and defends in a calmer way than his partner Caglar Soyuncu. Kevin De Bruyne has been the season’s outstanding midfield player and is a surefire selection in the right-centre role, while I’ve been hugely impressed with Mateo Kovacic — his ball-carrying skills have been crucial under Frank Lampard, after a relatively quiet season playing cautiously under Maurizio Sarri. Wilfried Ndidi has enjoyed an excellent campaign in the holding role behind James Maddison and Youri Tielemans and is also capable of pushing forward aggressively on the ball when needed. There’s so much competition up front, even without considering Liverpool players — Sergio Aguero, in particular, can feel disappointed to miss out. But Jamie Vardy remains the Premier League’s top goalscorer after an incredible start to the campaign, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has been consistent in an otherwise shambolic Arsenal side and Raul Jimenez’s ability to score goals and bring others into play has made him the division’s most complete No 9 this season. (4-3-3) – D Henderson (Sheffield United); Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool), Van Dijk (Liverpool), Evans (Leicester), Robertson (Liverpool); De Bruyne (Manchester City), Ndidi (Leicester), Kovacic (Chelsea); Vardy (Leicester), Jimenez (Wolves), Aubameyang (Arsenal) Jack Lang There was never any doubt that I would use my full allowance of Liverpool players; the difficulty was choosing which of Schrödinger’s title winners to leave out. Sadio Mane and Jordan Henderson especially have every right to feel aggrieved, but in the end I could not look past the three key men in the Premier League’s best defence. Virgil van Dijk is a colossus in every sense of the word, while Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson have shaken our preconceptions of what full-backs can do. They are joined at the back by Caglar Soyuncu, whose muscular brand of heroism has been one of the highlights of Leicester’s fine season, and by Sheffield United’s Dean Henderson. That the Sheffield United goalkeeper’s name is now cited in every conversation about the England No 1 jersey is testament to the way he has negotiated the step up to the top flight. With plenty of attacking intent elsewhere in the side, we can afford to have two holding midfielders, just to maintain order in the middle of the park. Oliver Norwood is not a massively showy player but he has impressed with his positional sense and passing range; his knack of spraying balls out to the flanks will be particularly useful in this side. Alongside him, the excellent Wilfred Ndidi gets the nod. He is a natural ball-winner whose energy and drive were hugely missed by Leicester when he was absent for a spell at the start of the year. Kevin De Bruyne has been the single most compelling attacking player in the league this season, more than making up for his injury-hit 2018-19 campaign. If more of his Manchester City team-mates had met his standards, we would have had a much more competitive title race. We go for variety either side of him: the direct threat of Adama Traore and the more subtle craft of Jack Grealish. The latter has been the best player in the bottom half of the table, keeping Aston Villa in the survival picture almost single-handedly. Traore, meanwhile, has come of age for Wolves, consistently finding a final ball at the end of his bottle-rocket bursts. Both are also just massively fun to watch. Four strikers have scored more goals than Danny Ings this season, but all play in teams that create far more chances than Southampton. Ings has often conjured something from nothing — two goals from closing down goalkeepers, for instance — and has been utterly clinical when the ball has fallen to him in the penalty area. That’s all we need from a striker in this side. (4-2-3-1) – D Henderson (Sheffield United); Trent Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool), Soyuncu (Leicester), Van Dijk (Liverpool), Robertson (Liverpool); Norwood (Sheffield United), Ndidi (Leicester); Traore (Wolves), De Bruyne (Manchester City), Grealish (Aston Villa); Ings (Southampton) Daniel Taylor Yes, that is Danny Ings in my attack ahead of Sergio Aguero — but if you can bear with me there is a reasonable explanation. Who would I choose to have in a Fantasy XI? Aguero, every time. Yet it is also a fact that Ings has outscored, among others, Sadio Mane and Marcus Rashford in the Premier League this season and, if penalties were taken out of the equation, he would be ahead of Aguero, level with Jamie Vardy and second in the top-scorers’ list to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Ings has done it for a Southampton side that is 14th in the league (though has been lower) and, as such, he has had fewer chances than the strikers from the elite teams. And, though I have often championed Aguero for more awards and recognition, I have also seen him have better seasons. Aubameyang is a mandatory pick as the leading scorer from open play in the country and my third attacking position would go to Mohamed Salah — which, again, is a tough one. For starters, you could probably get a cigarette paper between choosing him or Sadio Mane. It is difficult to elect both if we are limited to three players per club (I’m already omitting Virgil van Dijk, with some reluctance, to make sure Trent Alexander-Arnold and Jordan Henderson are included) and Salah edges it by the finest of margins. His problem is that he is always judged by his 2017-18 season but, even though he has not reached those exhilarating heights, he has still been an exceptional performer. My team would start with Sheffield United’s Dean Henderson in goal because, looking at the competition, it hasn’t been a brilliant year for the elite goalkeepers. David de Gea once had credentials at Manchester United to be recognised as the best in the world, but no more. Alisson has had his injury issues for Liverpool and, though it is unfair perhaps to pick out one bad match, Ederson’s accident-prone performance in the Manchester derby is still fresh in the memory. Alexander-Arnold is an obvious selection as possibly the most watchable right-back I have seen in the Premier League. Fernandinho gets one of the centre-back slots because of his performances for Manchester City (and for making us forget that he is, in reality, a midfielder). Conor Coady has been excellent for Wolves and maybe Ben Chilwell’s inclusion might help to make up for the absence of Vardy, his Leicester City team-mate. Midfield? Henderson would be a worthy winner of any player-of-the-year award but Kevin De Bruyne is the outstanding footballer in the league and, just because Manchester City were so far behind Liverpool, I don’t follow the logic that the individual honours have to go to a player from the team that finishes as champions. Finally, I would find a place for Jack Grealish, who had a relatively slow start to life in the top division with Aston Villa but then proved to everyone he can flourish at the highest level. Not that it should have been a huge surprise bearing in mind his contribution to Villa’s promotion from the Championship the previous year. (4-3-3)- D Henderson (Sheffield United); Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool), Fernandinho (Manchester City), Coady (Wolves), Chilwell (Leicester); De Bruyne (Manchester City), J Henderson (Liverpool), Grealish (Aston Villa); Salah (Liverpool), Ings (Southampton), Aubameyang (Arsenal). Stuart James First things first, I know what you’re thinking: 4-4-2? Who plays that formation these days? This, however, will be an expansive and fluid system that morphs into a 4-1-3-2 with the ball, with Jordan Henderson providing the defensive discipline (let’s be honest, nobody else is going to) that allows Adama Traore, Kevin De Bruyne and Jack Grealish to wreak havoc behind Jamie Vardy and Raul Jimenez. Yep, you can see where this is going: you score three, we’ll score four. Actually, you might be thinking something else when first looking at that team: where’s Virgil van Dijk? And shouldn’t Sadio Mane make the cut? Ideally, yes. But, with a maximum of three Liverpool players to choose from, this is the mother of all selection headaches and, ultimately, the lack of options in some positions (is it just me or is there a chronic shortage of quality left-backs in the Premier League?) came into my thinking. Alexander-Arnold, who is probably turning a generation of primary school children into right-backs by making it look like the most exciting position on the pitch, simply has to be in the team. In a way, the same goes for Robertson. If anybody is going to bring some leadership and control to a side that has 16,489 assists between and no handbrake, then it surely has to be Jordan Henderson, who has been outstanding for Liverpool this season as a footballer and a leader. De Bruyne is a mandatory pick and, quite frankly, can do what he likes in this side. He’s been much better than Manchester City this season. Grealish, who will drift in from that left touchline and even play as a second No 10 at times (in danger of sounding like Tim Sherwood here), deserves a place in the XI after excelling for a Villa side who would be nailed on for relegation without him. As for Traore, the speed machine and Alexander-Arnold working in tandem on the right is a match made in heaven, especially as the former has been schooled in the art of defending this season. The same can be said for the partnership up front. Vardy is the Premier League’s leading goalscorer and his pace, aggression and predatory finishing should dovetail beautifully with Jimenez, who seems a little underrated and under-appreciated — unless you’ve had the privilege to watch him play on a regular basis. Dean Henderson, who is one of many reasons why Sheffield United have the second-best defensive record in the league, gets the nod in goal. In front of him will be Caglar Soyuncu, Leicester’s Cruyff-turning centre-back, and Jack O’Connell, who has adapted to Premier League football this season as if he has played there all his life. Whether O’Connell will be allowed to overlap as he does as one of three centre-backs at Sheffield United… oh, sod it. Why not? (4-4-2) – D Henderson (Sheffield United); Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool), Soyuncu (Leicester), O’Connell (Sheffield United), Robertson (Liverpool); Traore (Wolves), J Henderson (Liverpool), De Bruyne (Manchester City), Grealish (Aston Villa); Vardy (Leicester), Jimenez (Wolves) This week, The Athletic’s writers have been choosing their Player of the Year for their club and writing a piece explaining their pick. We are also hosting an awards night on our app and social media on Sunday April 26 to decide the awards for the season so far. Read more here

Neymar, Van Dijk, Ozil and Ruddy: Inside stories of Chelsea’s failed signings https://theathletic.com/1777443/2020/04/29/chelsea-failed-signings-neymar-van-dijk-ozil/ Thanks to Roman Abramovich’s arrival in 2003, few Premier League clubs have generated more transfer headlines than Chelsea. From the moment the Russian multi-billionaire took over and David Dein, Arsenal vice-chairman at the time, moaned how “Abramovich has parked his Russian tanks on our lawn and is firing £50 notes at us”, Chelsea have been a hive of activity. Some of the finest players in the division’s history have been purchased in that time, from Claude Makelele and Didier Drogba to Eden Hazard and Arjen Robben. But sometimes, even the rich fail to get what they want. The Abramovich era is littered with names of players who were pursued, but didn’t join Chelsea’s high-rollers. Two of the most infamous to reject their advances were England duo Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney, but this is a piece highlighting some of the others and explaining why the switches never materialised… Robinho It seemed like the transfer equivalent of an own goal in the last minute. Chelsea’s bid to acquire Robinho from Real Madrid in 2008 was nearing completion only for the deal to collapse at the 11th hour. He ended up joining Manchester City instead. The common consensus back then, and since, has been that the move fell through because Chelsea upset Real Madrid by advertising official shirts with Robinho’s name on their website before the transfer had been finalised. But the Spanish club’s president at the time, Ramon Calderon, has told The Athletic a different version of events. He says, “Robinho and his agent Wagner Ribeiro were telling me all summer to let him leave, but they didn’t talk to me about any specific club. “They told me that there was an offer on the table, but neither I nor the club received any offer from Chelsea. Wagner said that I had to let the boy leave, because Cristiano Ronaldo was arriving (the following year) and he was going to be the star of the team. I always told him, ‘If there’s an offer, I will consider it’. “But we were waiting for an offer of €40 million (current value £34.9 million). Was the shirt issue the problem with Chelsea? No. I think this is what happened: when Wagner told Chelsea that we were asking for €40 million, they didn’t pursue it. There was no formal offer from Chelsea. “Peter Kenyon, Chelsea’s chief executive, never called me. He is a good friend of mine and he had my number. Peter and I negotiated the Robben transfer (from Chelsea to Real Madrid) together the summer before, so he would have phoned if he had been interested in Robinho. “An actual offer — a phone call with a concrete bid — didn’t come until 8pm on August 31. I was in my office, and was told that Manchester City would call me. That was what happened. There wasn’t much time, but it was a very short conversation: they made me an offer and we reached an agreement. The money arrived the next day.” City ended up paying £32.5 million for Robinho. To beat Abramovich to a big name was regarded as a real statement of intent by their new owners. However, he scored just 16 times in 17 months before being loaned to Santos and then sold to AC Milan in summer 2010. As for Riberio, he maintains all these years later that Chelsea, courtesy of their website gaffe, were the ones responsible for the move to west London falling through. “Kenyon came to Madrid to meet us,” he reveals to The Athletic. “We had dinner in De Maria restaurant. When we left, the street was full of journalists and cameramen. The next morning, we were on the covers of Marca and AS, with Robinho being linked to Chelsea. “The idea of going to Chelsea appealed to Robinho. (Former Brazil coach) Luiz Felipe Scolari was the coach for one thing and financially, it was the best offer. But Real Madrid saw that they were selling Robinho shirts on the Chelsea website. “Calderon and (Real director) Jose Angel Sanchez told the press that it was an outrage. For that reason, they would not let me give them Chelsea’s offer. City were building a great team at the time and Robinho didn’t do badly. But they weren’t as good as Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal.” Andrea Pirlo One of Italy’s finest midfielders would have been part of Chelsea’s revolution had Carlo Ancelotti got his way. As part of his own talks to leave AC Milan for Chelsea in summer 2009, Ancelotti urged them to agree a deal for Pirlo with his soon-to-be former club. He wanted to bring a key component from the team he had built at the San Siro with him to help introduce his style of play quickly at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea had an offer of £7 million plus striker Claudio Pizarro rejected, but thought they had got their man when meeting Milan’s £20 million asking price. Pirlo got to the stage of talking personal terms, only for the whole thing to be called off. After losing Ancelotti to Chelsea and Kaka to Real Madrid in the same window, Milan were under pressure from their fans not to let another key man leave. The Italian club’s president, Silvio Berlusconi, delivered the news in person. “Milan wouldn’t let me go,” Pirlo told the Daily Mail in 2012. “I have a very strong connection with Ancelotti, so I was in touch with him when he went to Chelsea. I had already started negotiating with the people at Chelsea but then finally Milan didn’t let me go. That’s why I stayed. “Certainly it would have been a different experience that I’d have liked, especially when I was 30 years old. So why not? But unfortunately it didn’t happen.” Neymar Former technical director Michael Emenalo will never be universally fondly remembered by Chelsea fans, but surely it would have been different if he had succeeded with the club’s final attempt to sign Neymar from Santos in 2013. Chelsea first pursued Neymar vigorously in 2010, and still had high hopes of beating Barcelona to his signature when they dispatched Emenalo to Brazil that summer. Emenalo prepared a passionate speech for the player and his father. In it, he called on NBA star Michael Jordan’s massive impact on the Chicago Bulls as an example of what Neymar could bring to Stamford Bridge. Chelsea were already a successful club by this stage, with a Champions League, a Europa League, three Premier League titles and six domestic cups won during the Abramovich era. However, Emenalo suggested Neymar could make Chelsea a household name all around the globe, just as Jordan did for the Bulls. It was made clear that manager Jose Mourinho was returning for a second spell in charge and that the Portuguese, as well as Chelsea officials, wanted Neymar. Emenalo told Neymar: “You are going to lead Chelsea to the top.” Footballer lawyer Marcos Motta, who was employed by Santos at the time, revealed what happened next in a 2017 book called Football’s Secret Trade: How The Player Transfer Market Was Infiltrated. He admitted it was of the greatest proposals he had ever heard, adding: “It was the very first time that I saw Neymar’s father listen to someone for more than 30 minutes without looking at his mobile.” Unfortunately for Chelsea, Neymar’s dream by this stage was to secure a move to the Nou Camp, so Emenalo’s efforts were in vain. What the English side and Santos didn’t know was Barcelona had agreed a package worth £35 million, of which £8.7 million was paid up front, to the player in 2011 with a view to him joining them at a later date. It would subsequently lead to a big tax-avoidance investigation into Barcelona. Chelsea came a lot closer a year before that, in 2010, when Neymar was just 18. A meeting took place at a Hilton Hotel in New York between Santos president Luis Alvaro de Oliveira Ribeiro (commonly known as LAOR), Neymar’s father, Neymar’s agent Wagner Ribeiro and super-agent Pini Zahavi, who was representing Chelsea. After initially having no interest in a move to Chelsea, Neymar Sr did a U-turn. “His dad changed his mind in the middle of this meeting and wanted me to go along with him,” LAOR said. “They were offering a huge amount of money, as well as a plan for his career, a brand-new car, luxury housing and everything else. I said, ‘No, no, no’.” Santos prepared a counter-offer, although that didn’t stop Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck travelling to Brazil in August 2010 intent on concluding negotiations over a £30.5 million transfer and a contract that would pay Neymar £90,000 a week. But as well as offering a number of perks on top of an increased salary and a 70 per cent cut of revenue made from his image rights, Santos promised a speech therapist, language classes and his own PR employee to persuade him to stay on. They even got the legendary Pele to speak to him. Neymar decided to stay put for another year. Then Barcelona came calling. Virgil van Dijk and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain Chelsea do not have fond memories of 2017 as far as new arrivals go. That was the year a combined £138 million was spent on Alvaro Morata, Danny Drinkwater and Tiemoue Bakayoko. To make matters worse, it was also the year Van Dijk and Oxlade-Chamberlain ignored Chelsea’s advances and chose to join Liverpool instead. There was a common theme in their two cases, namely that they much preferred the personality of Jurgen Klopp to his Stamford Bridge counterpart, Antonio Conte. That was quite a snub for the Italian, who had outshone the Liverpool coach by leading Chelsea to the Premier League title in his first season at the helm (2016-17). But his reputation for being a hard taskmaster in training went before him, as well as a more pragmatic style of football. His relationship with the Chelsea hierarchy was also on the wane. It is understood Van Dijk and Oxlade-Chamberlain had questions over how long Conte would be in charge for, whereas there was no such doubt over Klopp’s future on Merseyside. Their suspicions were proved right as the former Italy midfielder left Chelsea in acrimonious circumstances in 2018 at the end of his second season. In fairness, Chelsea were already facing a losing battle when it came to Van Dijk. On top of the desire to play for Klopp, the Dutch defender attended the 2017 Champions League final between Real Madrid and Juventus in Cardiff and was flattered by the amount of Liverpool fans urging him to join them. When Southampton made accusations against Liverpool over tapping-up Van Dijk, Chelsea hoped their better relationship with the team from the south coast would swing things in their favour. However the player’s mind was already made up — although he had to wait until January 1, 2018, to complete a £75 million move. Chelsea had been seen as favourites at one stage to get Oxlade-Chamberlain, but again things went awry. To add to his doubts over Conte’s longevity, he was also wary of the Italian wanting to play him on the right-hand side — a role he had been trying to get away from at Arsenal. In contrast, he was assured Klopp would pick him centrally, so even though Chelsea were prepared to offer higher wages, the England international opted for Liverpool. The fact England team-mates Jordan Henderson and Joe Gomez had thrived under Klopp since moving there was another factor that counted against Chelsea. David Silva It was during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, a tournament his Spain side were destined to win, that Silva publicly floated the idea of a future in the Premier League and, more specifically, with a team that played in blue. “Chelsea have established themselves as one of the best clubs in Europe over the last five years,” he said. “They might not have the history of Real Madrid or Milan, but they are creating their own history now. There is no reason why, in the future, Chelsea’s can’t be as decorated as Real. “Chelsea probably have, along with Barcelona, the best squad in football. If any player joins Chelsea, he knows he is going to win things. It would be a pleasure to play with them. There is no doubt in my mind that Chelsea would be a great club to play for — and a club where I could fulfil my ambition of league titles and the European Cup.” At the time, this felt like the culmination of a lengthy courtship. Silva had ripped a glorious left-footed shot beyond a flailing Petr Cech at Stamford Bridge in April 2007 during the first leg of a Champions League quarter-final against Valencia, alerting England’s nouveaux riche to his talents. Every transfer window thereafter seemed to see the links revived. By summer 2010 — with the then 24-year-old clearly ready for a new challenge after four years at the Mestalla and Chelsea about to release Joe Cole at the end of his contract — matters appeared to be moving towards a natural conclusion. Except, suddenly, there were other contenders on the scene. Manchester City, two years into the Abu Dhabi United ownership and upwardly mobile under the management of Roberto Mancini, boasted the financial clout and ambition to lure the Spain international to the north west. Perhaps Silva’s words in South Africa had been a final nudge towards Chelsea to make a move, a last call for them to firm up long-mooted interest. “We’re weighing up offers from three clubs, and one of them is Chelsea,” confirmed the midfielder’s agent at the time, Julio Llorente. “If Silva doesn’t want to go to City, the transfer isn’t possible.” That almost sounded like a representative pleading for more established suitors — and Chelsea were newly crowned Premier League champions at the time — to step forward. But with Chelsea focusing their efforts on Neymar (see above), City took advantage and paid Valencia £26 million for the playmaker to wear a lighter shade of blue. Silva has since made more than 400 appearances for them, helping the club to win four league titles and seven domestic cups in his 10 years at the club. Eliaquim Mangala Silva isn’t the only player Chelsea lived to regret moving to Manchester City — The Athletic went into detail last November over how they lost out on Sergio Aguero. But not every decision has come back to haunt them. In 2014, they pulled out of the race before City signed Mangala from Porto for £42 million. The centre-back, who spoke publicly beforehand about how he preferred a move to Chelsea, struggled to justify that price tag. He made just 79 appearances for City over five seasons before joining Valencia on a free transfer last summer. What isn’t so well known, though, is how Chelsea could have bought him a lot sooner and a lot cheaper when he was still a teenager making his mark in Belgium at Standard Liege. Mangala was represented by Michael Becker back in 2010 and, with his help, Liege were hoping to earn a nice fee for the 19-year-old Frenchman they had converted from a striker into a defender. Becker was more famous for being the agent of Michael Ballack, who had been one of Chelsea’s most famous marquee acquisitions four years earlier. Obviously that meant Becker had already established a good dialogue with the Stamford Bridge boardroom and he put forward Mangala’s name as someone they should look at to buy. It was considered, but didn’t get far beyond a couple of conversations. Chelsea already had their eyes on a more established defender in Benfica’s David Luiz, who joined the following January. Mangala moved to Porto in summer 2011 for around £6 million before replacing Becker with another super-agent, Jorge Mendes. Mesut Ozil Ozil has been a pretty divisive — and expensive — presence since joining London rivals Arsenal, so the story of football in the capital would have taken a significantly different path had Chelsea beaten them to his signature. The opportunity was there after Ozil had starred for Germany during their run to the World Cup semi-finals in South Africa a decade ago — the same summer when Chelsea allowed Silva (see above) to slip through their fingers. Naturally, the then-Werder Bremen playmaker had Europe’s elite clubs making eyes at him. Ancelotti’s reigning Premier League champions were among them. Chelsea were in a good position to secure the 21-year-old’s services, thanks to club’s close working relationship with Klaus Allofs. Bremen general manager Allofs had established a good rapport with Chelsea during negotiations to re-sign their former striker Pizarro, initially on a season’s loan in 2008 and then on a permanent basis 12 months later. He believed Chelsea might deliver the biggest transfer fee for the Bundesliga club’s most prized asset and the idea was certainly mooted to them. Ozil’s camp, however, had other ideas. Despite Bremen’s best efforts, negotiations between the player and Chelsea never reached a serious stage, unlike those with Arsenal and Barcelona. However, following meetings between his representatives and Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, as well as Barcelona director of football Andoni Zubizarreta, Ozil decided to join Real Madrid. The new coach at the Bernabeu — a certain Jose Mourinho — had managed to convince the Gelsenkirchen-born attacking midfielder that the next step in his career should take him to the Spanish capital. Ozil won La Liga and the Copa del Rey with Real Madrid before moving to Arsenal in September 2013 for £42.5 million. Luke Shaw It is often regarded as an advantage if the player you are trying to sign supports your team, but Shaw is an example of how little sway it can hold. Chelsea wanted to make Shaw the successor to the departing Ashley Cole in summer 2014 and were prepared to pay the Southampton left-back up to £90,000 a week to join them. That was a remarkable sum for a defender who was only turning 19 that July. Given Shaw, who was born in Kingston, south-west London, and his family were known to be big Chelsea supporters, people in the game thought it was a matter of when, not if, he joined his idols despite strong interest from Manchester United. But much to Mourinho’s frustration, Shaw’s allegiance to Chelsea was quickly forgotten when United trumped their salary offer by offering an incredible £130,000 a week. Chelsea broke off negotiations and bought Brazil international Filipe Luis from Atletico Madrid instead, while Shaw headed up to Old Trafford. Mourinho, not for the last time in his managerial career as it turned out, made his feelings known about the England international in the press. “If we pay to a 19-year-old boy what we were being asked for, to sign Luke Shaw, we are dead,” he said. “We would have killed our stability with Financial Fair Play and killed the stability in our dressing room. Because when you pay that much to a 19-year-old kid – a good player, fantastic player – but when you pay that amount of money, the next day, we would have had players knocking on our door. “They would have been saying, ‘How is it possible I play 200 games for this club, won this and that, yet a 19-year-old comes here and gets more money than I get?’ It would’ve killed immediately our balance and we couldn’t allow that.” Mourinho would go on to manage Shaw when he became United manager four years ago and the pair endured a difficult relationship. Since Mourinho was sacked in December 2018 and replaced by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Shaw’s form has improved markedly. John Ruddy And finally, it’s worth pointing out how less-fashionable names have rejected Chelsea, too. Step forward John Ruddy. In the summer of 2013, the Londoners were seeking a back-up goalkeeper to Petr Cech who could be classed as “homegrown” for UEFA competition. Winning the previous season’s Europa League final had them back competing in the Champions League and top of their list of goalkeeper targets was Norwich City’s No 1. Ruddy had been handed his first England cap the previous August and was hoping to do enough in the coming season to make Roy Hodgson’s World Cup squad in Brazil. Chelsea, impressed by his presence as well as his “homegrown” status, initially offered a deal worth £5 million — £3 million up front and a further £2 million with add-ons – which was rejected. Unperturbed, and clearly working on the assumption the player would be keen to come, they upped it to something worth closer to £6 million. The problem was the 26-year-old, on reflection, was not so keen on the move. Ruddy had experience of life at bigger clubs from earlier in his career. He had joined Everton from fourth-tier Cambridge United in 2005, but only made a single league appearance for them over the next five years. There were loans aplenty — Walsall, Rushden & Diamonds, Chester City, Stockport County (twice), Wrexham, Bristol City, Crewe Alexandra and Motherwell — before the £250,000 move to Norwich in 2010 that gave him the platform to forge a successful career. It was the memory of life as a squad member at Goodison Park that dissuaded Ruddy from joining Chelsea. “I’d spent five years at Everton being shipped out on loan left, right and centre. I didn’t want to go back to doing that,” said Ruddy, now second-choice at Wolverhampton Wanderers. “I was playing week in, week out at Norwich. I was 26 and involved in the England squad. There was a possibility of going to the World Cup at the end of the season. I’d worked hard to get into the position of being first choice, and I didn’t want to give that up.” The deal duly died a death once it was clear his priorities lay elsewhere, for very legitimate reasons, and Chelsea signed Mark Schwarzer on a free transfer from neighbours Fulham instead. The only problem for Ruddy was what happened next. “That season ended with relegation, and I didn’t make the World Cup squad,” he said. At least he can smile about it now. — Additional reporting by Raphael Honigstein, James Pearce and James Horncastle

Mourinho factor decisive as PSG star ‘won over’ by Tottenham switch https://www.teamtalk.com/news/mourinho-decisive-psg-meunier-tottenham

Duje Caleta-Car should have been 1st team CB with Yunis Abdelhamid, as Marquinhos played at DMF a lot this year Aouar over Payet for me as well, and that is the only other disagreement if Yunis Abdelhamid was 25, I would be all over him, but alas, he is 32, Reims were an amazing defence this year Predrag Rajkovic is my number one suggestion for GK, along with Ugurcan Cakir PSG is the most fucked over team due to COVID, I think they would have won the CL finally (Bayern 2nd) this was their most loaded team in history, zero true weaknesses, insane firepower, di Maria was just a beast this year, Icardi was tracking to 30 goals, and Mbappe, to a Messi peak number, 55-60 goals, 30 plus assists, plus they had Neymar, Cavani, Draxler, Sarabia, and a top 3 in world CMF in Verratti, who had his best season ever IMHO they could have had SIX players with 20 or more goals, that is just madness, 2 deep in quality players at every position, with SIX good to great CB's I do not recall a deeper team ever

Chelsea want €42m for midfielder – Club’s director makes ‘first approach’ http://sportwitness.co.uk/chelsea-want-e42m-midfielder-leave-clubs-director-makes-first-approach/ Earlier this month, Le10 Sport revealed that Leonardo was interested in Chelsea’s Tiemoué Bakayoko. Looking for new midfielders, the Paris Saint-Germain technical director turned his attention to a player he already knew from his time in Milan, having brought him in on loan during his time there. The defensive midfielder has spent the 2019-20 season on loan at AS Monaco, and while there was an option to buy the player at €42m, it appears the principality side will not be triggering it. This is what RMC Sport journalist Loïc Tanzi is reporting on Tuesday afternoon, adding that ‘there has been a first approach’ from Leonardo for Bakayoko, even if the whole affair ‘doesn’t seem to advanced’. This backs up the information gathered by Le10 Sport a couple of weeks ago, as Tanzi also adds the player’s profile is indeed appreciated at Paris Saint-Germain. However, for any club who want the defensive midfielder in their squad next season on a permanent basis, they will have to cough up a lot of money. Tanzi added that Chelsea want ‘no less’ than the €42m from the Monaco purchase clause if he is to be sold. Whether there are clubs out there willing to pay that for him, however, remains to be seen. snip

Crazy amount of dregs to liquidate ASAP 3 Spain DF Marcos Alonso 33 Italy DF Emerson Palmieri Netherlands MF Marco van Ginkel England GK Jamal Blackman (to Bristol Rovers until 31 May 2020) England DF Josh Grant (to Plymouth Argyle until 31 May 2020) United States DF Matt Miazga (to Reading until 31 May 2020) England DF Richard Nartey (to Burton Albion until 31 May 2020) Ghana DF Baba Rahman (to Mallorca until 30 June 2020) Italy DF Davide Zappacosta (to Roma until 30 June 2020) France MF Tiémoué Bakayoko (to Monaco until 30 June 2020) England MF Danny Drinkwater (to Aston Villa until 30 June 2020) Brazil MF Kenedy (to Getafe until 30 June 2020) Nigeria MF Victor Moses (to Inter Milan until 30 June 2020) Belgium MF Charly Musonda (to Vitesse until 30 June 2020) Brazil MF Nathan (to Atlético Mineiro until 30 June 2020) Croatia MF Mario Pašalić (to Atalanta until 30 June 2020) (He is NOT dregs, and Atalanta will use his £13m buy clause and probably sell him for double that if they need the cash) Brazil MF Lucas Piazon (to Rio Ave until 30 June 2020) England FW Izzy Brown (to Luton Town until 31 May 2020)

only if it is one of those 70's porn style ones

Mount got a shedload of minutes under Lamps, so I highly doubt he disappears back to an Emerson level of minutes role, unless we do buy Havertz and no other winger (which then would mean, I assume, Ziyech is thus locked in at RW mostly and not AMF nearly as much) btw (nothing to do with your original post, but it is germane to your reply) it looks like we are massively pushing for Mertens (per Italian sources) so if we keep Giroud, and Tammy, then Mertens makes 3 (Michy HAS to go) so that would preclude a truly long term great striker coming in this summer so two of our 3 strikers will be 33 and 34 years old, eeeek (technically both 34 at the end of the coming season, as Mertens turns 33 in 8 days)

It's coming home! roflmaoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Chelsea 'call Mertens every day' https://www.football-italia.net/152643/chelsea-call-mertens-every-day Chelsea manager Frank Lampard is “calling Dries Mertens almost every day” to encourage the Napoli striker to move, claims transfer intermediary Vincenzo Morabito. There had already been multiple reports of strong Chelsea interest in the Belgium international in January, and he will be a free agent when his Napoli contract expires in the summer. “Mertens had originally said he wanted to stay at Napoli, but then his lawyer started offering him to various international clubs, meaning something changed between the player and the Azzurri,” Morabito told Radio Kiss Kiss Napoli. “I know this because I was working on the Olivier Giroud issue when he was meant to leave Chelsea in January, with a lucrative contract line up for Mertens. “Chelsea have now extended Giroud’s contract as a precaution, but they are very interested in Mertens and Lampard is calling him almost every day. I can see Mertens going to Chelsea.” Inter, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool have also been mentioned when it comes to the Belgian striker. Meanwhile, Morabito also gave an update on the Edinson Cavani situation. “I spoke to the people who are looking after his interests and it seems to me he will sign on for another year with PSG. The alternative would be Atletico Madrid.”

good press and it would be written off from the FFP balance sheets

Hardly a shock there, and glad to see him not end up in the EPL. He (and Saliba who they get back from loan) would have instantly sorted Arsenal at the back.