Vesper

you think David is underwhelming? If so, I am glad you have no input I recall people saying the same thing about Camavinga and Tchou (our own fucking shit scouts said so then!) when I was hell bent to sign them, because................. Ligue 1 🙄 smdh

only 24yo and already on almsot 200 total topflight goals produced for club and country 147 goals and 49 assists

you still have to run, jump, tackle

our physios must be just be SHIT as he was so often injured in 3 of the last 4 years with us (especially the last one), and now is back (at 33yo as well!) to being a machine

Should have been our 2 linear (Kante passing the baton to Tchou) DMFs arffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

I want

AND Paez 🩵🩵

top right wingers in terms of valuation Phil Foden Bukayo Saka Rodrygo (right footed) Lamine Yamal Leroy Sané Ousmane Dembélé (ambipedal) Michael Olise Pedro Neto Dejan Kulusevski Moussa Diaby Mohamed Salah (too old for Bayern to commit to his MASSIVE salary, he turns 33 right after next season ends) Raphinha Takefusa Kubo Jarrod Bowen Brennan Johnson

if we are not willing to pay around £200 to 225K PW for Olise not a chance we will likely make a move for (talking CBs now): Ronald Araujo Alessandro Bastoni Matthijs de Ligt (do not want him anyway) anytime soon leaving (Scalvini is injured and out until 2025) my main targets: Bremer Leny Yoro António Silva Jean-Clair Todibo Riccardo Calafiori left footed Gonçalo Inácio left footed Piero Hincapié left footed

Aston Villa is the new Brighton!

DO IT

woot

Nico Williams transfer TRUTH as Chelsea interest clarified after Olise exit; Liverpool & Arsenal wait on complex deal Nico Williams' release clause is €58m [£49m] https://thedailybriefing.io/p/nico-williams-transfer-truth-as-Chelsea A lot of movements around Nico Williams in recent days in the media. He’s doing fantastically well at the European Championship, but, at the moment, there are still no advanced negotiations with any single club for his signature this summer. At the moment, nothing is advanced and nothing is concrete yet. Full focus on the Euros and then we will see! The release clause in his contract is €58m [£49m]. The expectation is for his situation to be clarified after the Euros not during the tournament. Chelsea at this moment, despite not signing Michael Olise, are not in advanced talks for Nico Williams. He was on their list a while ago, but there is not something advanced in terms of negotiations now, also because his salary is expensive beyond his €58m release clause. Barcelona love Nico Williams but it all depends on what happens with Financial Fair Play. Then there was interest in recent months from Arsenal, Liverpool, Bayern too (but now they are signing Olise). Let’s see what Arsenal, Liverpool and Barcelona decide to do - but it’s not an easy deal! It’s an expensive deal. So we’re waiting for concrete movements.

some other sites say £325K PW https://www.capology.com/player/raheem-sterling-34676/ https://www.spotrac.com/epl/Chelsea-fc/cap/_/year/2024

fucking £350K PW!! https://salarysport.com/football/player/raheem-sterling/

Chelsea https://thedailybriefing.io/i/145876627/Chelsea Marc Cucurella on new Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca with Dan Bennett (Hayters): “We are happy with Enzo Maresca as the new manager. He did a great job at Leicester, he's a really good coach, I hope we'll have a good season at Chelsea.” Full details on Chelsea’s pursuit of Boca Juniors’ talent Aaron Anselmino in Fabrizio Romano’s column. Chelsea decided to leave the race for Michael Olise after Crystal Palace offered the Frenchman a bigger deal (and amid high financial requests). Deal off, as reported by David Ornstein. Chelsea have registered their interest in Hoffenheim’s Maximilian Beier [Sky Germany] Chelsea and Palmeiras set to review documents for Willian Estevão this weekend in order to get it signed. This would involve a €40m fixed fee with €20m easy add-ons and €5m difficult extra add-ons. There’s a contract on the table until June 2032. Medical tests already completed ahead of his arrival in 2025. Fabrizio Romano has all the details on Chelsea’s interest in Samuel Omorodion in his latest column. Chelsea have been linked with a move for Inter Milan defender Federico Dimarco. [HITC]

Bild said 10 to 12 million euros per year https://m.bild.de/sport/fussball/fc-bayern-franzosen-star-will-nach-muenchen-gruenes-licht-fuer-gespraeche-6675d082606525061f3aeadf Which breaks down to £162.5K to £200.1K PW

we are on a real path to becing a feeder club for Real Citeh Bayern PSG and eventually Barca, once they sort their financials out maybe Pool, Arse, and Manure as well thank fuck Inter, AC Milan and Juve are hamstrung by the low money Serie A, especially Inter, who already can block us from buying all the great players they have

Real Madrid, despite the public comments of coach Carlo Ancelotti, will participate in 2025.

Why Chelsea are early supporters of the new Club World Cup https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5572456/2024/06/19/Chelsea-club-world-cup/ This time next year, FIFA expects to launch the new expanded version of the Club World Cup in the United States, with 32 teams from around the globe competing for supremacy. Chelsea, having completed a second consecutive season without Champions League football, will be back among the elite of the club game. FIFA’s decision to introduce a new competition, which promises 63 matches over a month, to a stretch of the crowded football calendar normally reserved for major international tournaments or summer holidays for players has been controversial. FIFPro and the World Leagues Association have threatened legal action, accusing the governing body of not showing enough consideration for player welfare and the organisation of domestic leagues. GO DEEPER Why are Napoli - and other teams - now so keen to qualify for the men's Club World Cup? But none of those concerns are shared in the corridors of power at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea can be considered enthusiastic early supporters of the Club World Cup, and are factoring it into their decision-making on many levels — not least the move to mutually part with Mauricio Pochettino this summer and hire Enzo Maresca as head coach on a five-year contract. Chelsea were looking at what lies ahead as effectively a double season, with two domestic campaigns bookending the Club World Cup. They wanted to ensure they had a long-term coach in place who fit within their structure and culture to minimise disruption ahead of the tournament. Maresca ticks those boxes to a degree they concluded that Pochettino simply did not. The most urgent priority for Maresca is to lead Chelsea back into the Champions League by securing a top-four finish in the Premier League in 2024-25. But the new Club World Cup is viewed internally alongside the FA Cup, Carabao Cup and Europa Conference League as a serious trophy for him and his squad to target. Considerable thought is also being put into how Chelsea’s squad might be best constructed to deal with as many as 75 or 80 competitive matches across all competitions over the next 12 months. There are also considerations on how pre-season preparations for the 2025-26 campaign might need to be modified in light of Club World Cup exertions. But on the whole, Chelsea do not believe the summer of 2025 will prove any more challenging to navigate than this one, in which a significant number of their players have been called up to the European Championship, Copa America and Olympics. In fact, one arguable benefit of the Club World Cup is that clubs can more directly manage the workload and training schedules of their players than they can influence the approach of national teams. For all the difficulties it poses, the expanded Club World Cup presents what all elite clubs are perennially searching for: a potentially lucrative opportunity for revenue growth. Chelsea’s qualification for the inaugural edition of the competition, secured by winning the Champions League in 2020-21, is already having a positive impact on their “enterprise value” according to respected data and analytics platform Football Benchmark. FIFA is yet to confirm what money will be on offer for Club World Cup participants and the eventual winner as negotiations drag on with potential broadcast and sponsorship partners. Even so, the eventual figures are expected to be meaningful even for a club with Chelsea’s revenue, which broke the £500million ($635m) barrier for the first time in their 2022-23 accounts. As detailed in The Athletic earlier this month, FIFA still has several significant hurdles to overcome to get the expanded Club World Cup off the ground. Chief among them are finalising broadcast deals that balance guaranteed income with TV visibility for a new competition, and sponsorship agreements on a level that ensures they can make participating financially worthwhile for some of Europe’s leading clubs. But there is no doubt at Chelsea that FIFA will make president Gianni Infantino’s big idea a reality next summer, and that it will grow over time into a prized fixture in the football calendar every four years. Real Madrid, despite the public comments of coach Carlo Ancelotti, will participate in 2025. So too will Manchester City, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain, Borussia Dortmund, Inter Milan, Juventus, Atletico Madrid, Porto, Benfica and Red Bull Salzburg. The last two years have underlined that Chelsea are no longer guaranteed to compete in such rarefied European company. But they could also face the Copa Libertadores holders or the Champions League winners from North America, Asia or Africa. It is the truly global nature of the tournament that distinguishes it and could make it resonate particularly with the huge numbers of elite European club supporters who live overseas. Chelsea view their participation in the Club World Cup as a valuable opportunity to engage with and further grow their sizeable worldwide fanbase. America is a helpful choice of host in that sense — offering a wide range of large, modern stadiums surrounded by hotels and facilities attractive to travelling supporters. There is also the prospect of FIFA partnering with a global streaming platform, making tournament matches readily available to watch on smartphones and tablets anywhere in the world. Most important of all, it is a grand international stage that Chelsea can safely incorporate into their plans. The same cannot be said for the Champions League, though it is hoped that their exile from Europe’s elite club competition is nearing its end. GO DEEPER One year until the Club World Cup in the United States - what's going on?

Chelsea plan to double down on aggressive youth transfers after Estevao Willian signing https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5575306/2024/06/20/Chelsea-aggressive-youth-transfers-estevao-willian/ When Chelsea reached an agreement to sign 17-year-old winger Estevao Willian from Palmeiras, it was significant for a couple of reasons. First is that the fee — £28.7million (€34m, $36.5m) up front, potentially rising to £48.1million with performance-based incentives — took Chelsea’s guaranteed transfer fee commitments on teenagers under Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly above £150million. Second is that it provided the clearest signal yet of where Chelsea’s recruitment strategy is heading: not back towards the established international signings that powered much of the success under Roman Abramovich, but doubling down on an aggressive, coordinated attempt to assemble the best young talent. It is likely that the level of investment in Estevao will remain something of an outlier; Chelsea regard him as a better prospect than his former team-mate Endrick, who they courted extensively before his decision to agree to sign for Real Madrid in December 2022. When he officially moves to Stamford Bridge after his 18th birthday next year, it will be with a view to taking an immediate first-team role. On Thursday, they moved for another promising young player, opening talks with Boca Juniors over the signing of defender Aaron Anselmino. It is increasingly evident Chelsea want to position themselves to recruit every teenage footballer they identify as having elite potential. Clearlake and Boehly are spending six times more than the previous owner on youth recruitment, and intend to scale it up. That money is not solely going into transfer fees on promising teenagers. Chelsea are continuing to build their global scouting and data analytics teams beyond the headline hire of Sam Jewell from Brighton & Hove Albion as director of global recruitment in May, seeking to complement modern digital methods of performance analysis at Cobham with more high-level scouts and recruiters on the ground. As highlighted by the signings of Andrey Santos, Angelo Gabriel, Deivid Washington, Kendry Paez and Estevao, South America is a key area of focus. Chelsea are far from the first club to hone in on this hotbed of talent, but they are dedicating significant resources to building a comprehensive scouting and recruitment network there, led locally by individuals who can use their contacts with agents, academy staff and club owners. One example is Alysson Marins, the former Corinthians chief scout who publicly announced he was joining Chelsea in July 2023. Co-sporting directors Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley had dealt productively with Marins at their previous clubs and held him in high regard for his recruitment expertise. Chelsea’s vastly increased spending on youth recruitment is most accurately characterised as a redirection of investment. The first-team wage bill, which ballooned to an unwieldy £404million in the 2022-23 accounts, has been drastically reduced to a level significantly lower than in the final years of the Abramovich era. That is unlikely to delight supporters used to seeing Chelsea spend close to every available penny in search of an immediate challenge for major trophies, but Clearlake and Boehly do not believe it is realistic or sustainable to target the world’s best established players at the peak value. They would rather try to sign the potential superstars of tomorrow at a lower cost, develop them in the right way and then retain them. Persuading these teenagers to sign long-term contracts at Chelsea is only the beginning of the challenge. Ensuring continued development is no easy task with first-team minutes at Stamford Bridge relatively limited, though the 2024-25 season could stretch to 75 or 80 matches across all competitions once next summer’s expanded Club World Cup is factored in. One area for potential improvement next season is the use of loans, and Chelsea will have considerably more flexibility under FIFA’s limits if they succeed in offloading Romelu Lukaku and Kepa Arrizabalaga. More developing players are likely to follow the path walked by Gabriel and Santos last season to BlueCo sister club Strasbourg. Agreeing major deals such as the ones for Paez and Estevao raises other developmental considerations. Chelsea have too much invested in them to simply leave them to their own devices at Independiente del Valle and Palmeiras until they are old enough to move to England. Constant communication, support and mentorship is required — without violating FIFA rules — to ensure they continue to grow as players and people. Chelsea insist they always recruit with developmental pathways in mind, rather than out of a desire to stockpile elite talent. That becomes harder to compute when you realise that Estevao is the seventh left-footed attacking midfielder or right-winger under the age of 23 that Clearlake and Boehly have signed in two years, but it is not in the owners interests for these players to stagnate. Laurence and Winstanley have been empowered to implement succession planning with forward-focused recruitment in every position. Estevao and Paez may operate in many of the same areas of the pitch as Cole Palmer, Noni Madueke or (hypothetically) Michael Olise, but they are five years younger. Chelsea aspire to never be left short of the quality they require regardless of who might leave, as the squad evolves. It is fair to ask where the Cobham academy, one of the most prolific producers of top-level footballers, fits into this. Chelsea’s aggressive recruitment under Abramovich too often blocked any realistic route for home-grown talents to break through, and Clearlake and Boehly are keen to ensure the standard to play for the first team remains every bit as high. But part of Laurence and Winstanley’s remit is to more closely integrate the academy, creating and maintaining pathways for the best products to transition to the first team, ideally without the need for loan spells elsewhere. One reason Sport Recife defender Pedro Lima is choosing between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Strasbourg rather than Wolves and Chelsea this summer is because Josh Acheampong, who made his Premier League debut against Tottenham Hotspur in May, is viewed internally as being in front of him. Chelsea expect to go into next season with as many as 10 homegrown players in their first-team squad, headlined by club captain Reece James and Levi Colwill. But the best Cobham graduates will be challenged to compete with elite young signings for minutes, and those not regarded as being of that level will be sold. The prevailing philosophy can be summarised as ‘steel sharpens steel’: that the best Chelsea’s academy produces will be elevated to greater heights by young signings, and vice versa. Estevao and Paez will add their considerable talents to that mix next year. More will follow.

Chelsea open talks with Boca Juniors over Aaron Anselmino transfer https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5578387/2024/06/20/Chelsea-aaron-anselmino-transfer/ Chelsea have opened talks with Boca Juniors over the signing of defender Aaron Anselmino. The 19-year-old, who can also play in midfield, has played just 10 times for the senior Boca Juniors side so far having come through the Argentine club’s youth ranks. Despite his career being at such an early stage, Anselmino’s performances has led to speculation over interest from European clubs in recent months. Chelsea have made a move to beat any potential competition for the teenager’s signature by starting initial discussions with Boca over signing him. There are reports in Argentina suggesting Chelsea have offered a fee worth £14.1million plus a further £3.1m in add-ons. This has not been confirmed by Chelsea but they are negotiating over the fee. Anselmino is not the only young transfer target from South America on their wishlist though. Looking for some of the best emerging talent in the region is just part of Chelsea’s recruitment model. Last month they agreed a deal worth up to €57m for Palmeiras winger Willian Estevao. The 17-year-old will officially join up with the squad next summer, after he has turned 18. GO DEEPER Chelsea's aggressive youth recruitment means days of signing players at peak are over