COMMENT: Are they really going to make him do it? This new Chelsea regime. Are they really going to force Cesar Azpilicueta into submitting a transfer demand to get his move away…?
Ten-year player. Club captain. A man who has led Chelsea to the very pinnacle of the game. Now at 32 years of age, he wants to return home. To Spain. To Barcelona. Where he has already settled on personal terms – for much less than he’s now on at Stamford Bridge.
So why stand in his way? Why force the issue? Why slap a price-tag of £7m on a player who has generated far, far more for the club over his decade long service? In doing so, putting at risk hopes of closing out his career in front of family and friends back home?
Well, reading between the lines, the answer is these LA Dodgers metrics. From London, the claim is Chelsea’s new board, with Dodgers owner Todd Boehly at the helm, have set their price as that’s what they’ve seen in the ledger from 2012, when a 22 year-old Azpilicueta arrived from Olympique Marseille for a fee of… £7m.
It can’t be that simple. It can’t be that unsophisticated. But that’s the claim. The software spurted it out. Cold. Clinical. Bereft of emotion or sentiment. And so this is the price Barca must pay to prise Azpilicueta away from Stamford Bridge.
Now, they might still do it. The famous ‘financial levers’ Joan Laporta, the Barca president, is pulling down sequentially are pouring over €500m into the club’s coffers. But that’s the cash available. There’s still the matter of Financial Fair Play and the LaLiga’s strict wage ceiling demands. It could be that the £7m Chelsea want for Azpilicueta might be just too much to fit Xavi’s new season squad under the required financial cap.
But even if it all goes through, does Azpilicueta deserve such treatment? Let’s not forget it was the club, not the player, which triggered the 12 month option in Azpilicueta’s contract in May as it was running down. That was done unilaterally. The Basque wasn’t even consulted. All the while he was getting word from his agents as talks with Mateu Alemany and Jordi Cruyff rumbled on about a dream autumn career move to Barca.
At both ends of the table there was hope, nigh belief, that Chelsea wouldn’t stand in his way should he request a free transfer. Azpilicueta was confident he’d be released from this 12 month option if he so asked.
But that was under the old regime. People he had worked with, and for, for the past decade. The new board? Well, clearly everything has changed.
So what does he do? What happens should Laporta inform Azpilicueta they simply cannot spend €10m on a player with less than 12 months on his contract and who will be 33 next month? Does he shrug it off? Get his head down and play out a final year?
Or does he go to war? Slap in the transfer demand. Play up. Down tools. And in the process tear down everything he has built with the Blues support over these last ten years?
The bigger question is, why place such a great servant of the club in this position?
Yes, there is a demand for defenders at Chelsea. With Toni Rudiger and Andreas Christensen now gone, the call has come from Thomas Tuchel directly. The manager making it very clear this week where the priority should be.
“The priority right now is defence, it’s not a secret. From there we need to see what’s possible,” said the German.
“The stakes are high and we’re competing not only against the best teams who have ever played in the Premier League but also the best coaches.
“We come from sanctions, we come from losing top-quality players, key players, we are a club in transition, in transition of ownership, we were behind in the transfer race and we were behind in the table. So we have things to improve.”
This was in reaction to Boehly’s first deal as Blues owner: Raheem Sterling – now formerly of Manchester City. Tuchel welcomed the winger’s arrival, insisting it was proof the new ownership could get deals done, even after gutting the club’s front office.
But the manager was also ringing the alarm bells. With the season kickoff three weeks away, his squad was short. And hopelessly so in defence. Sterling’s arrival was good for headlines, but it did nothing for his back four.
Holding onto his captain would ease the anxiety. But what efforts have the board made to do so? If Azpilicueta was so required, why hasn’t there been an approach about upgrading this 12 month deal to make him feel wanted? Or extending it to two or three years? Why not try to make it worth his while to scrap his Barca plans and play out his career in Blue?
But none of this has been done. Perhaps the Dodgers software doesn’t allow it? Instead, they’ve placed their captain in an unwarranted and undeserved position. It really does appear this new board are forcing Azpilicueta to go public and submit his transfer demand.
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