Joao Felix cost Atletico Madrid over £100million and has spent time on loan at Chelsea and FC Barcelona despite his failure to live up to expectations.
We can’t believe Chelsea have paid over £40million to sign him this summer. He is a lucky boy. The luckiest of every lucky sod this summer. Here are six of them, including the Blues’ most recent addition to their circus.
Joao Felix
Although we wouldn’t wish playing for Chelsea on our worst enemy right now, we can’t quite believe how Joao Felix has spawned a £42million transfer to Stamford Bridge, earning himself the inevitable seven-year contract. It is all very laughable, even from a Chelsea fan’s point of view.
We could talk about this transfer until the cows come home. We understand that Conor Gallagher only had a year left on his Chelsea contract and rejected a few offers to extend, so the Blues understandably worked endlessly to sell him this summer. There was interest from Tottenham and Aston Villa but a sniff of Atletico Madrid being willing to pay over £30m was enough. There was a hitch though; Atletico wanted Chelsea to buy one of their players to make it happen.
Alas, Joao Felix has returned. It was supposed to be Samu Omorodion but he rejected Chelsea’s contract offer. Scrambling for an alternative, his agent Jorge Mendes opened talks over Felix’s return to Stamford Bridge after an underwhelming loan spell in the second half of 2022/23.
Chelsea decided Felix was worth £42m and you can understand Atletico wanting a significant fee for the Portuguese attacker; they did pay over £100m for him after all and have still made one hell of a loss on that investment.
Having failed to live up to the hype, Felix fell out with Diego Simeone and spent six months at Chelsea before earning himself a loan move to Barcelona. Again, he underwhelmed. Again, he has earned an incredible transfer. There is a reason Mendes has such a colossal reputation.
Not only has he joined a big club (in complete and utter disarray), but Felix is on a seven-year contract, presumably as one of the club’s highest earners. Some guys have all the luck, don’t they?
READ: The 20 biggest transfers of the summer of 2024
Matthijs de Ligt
Some players seem to end up at a top club no matter what. De Ligt has represented the grandest instution in his home country, breaking through at Ajax. He then joined Juventus as the finest young centre-back in world football. After failing to meet expectations, he moved to Bayern Munich. Having lost his starting spot to Eric Dier of all players, De Ligt is now playing for the biggest club in England, Manchester United.
Honestly, fair enough. The 25-year-old is still living off his teenage hype and will hope he can reach his potential under his former Ajax manager, Erik ten Hag. He gets a lot of criticism, but if you were to bet on anyone to bring the best out of De Ligt, it would be the man who has done it before.
We can’t quite believe De Ligt has found himself at another elite club. Good luck to him.
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Emerson Royal
Having shown a lack of consistency, struggled defensively and produced excellent no-look passes at Tottenham, Emerson has earned himself a move to AC Milan. The days of Italian football being known for its world-class defenders are long gone.
In fairness to Tottenham, they have had a blinder here, getting 15 million euros for the Brazilian. Honestly, fair f**ks.
The AC Milan fans appear to have taken to Emerson already and the player has been handed Kaka’s old number. Maybe social media has done him a disservice.
William Osula
It is more than the randomness of this deal that has thrown us off. Sure, Osula is a player with plenty of promise, but someone whose arrival has angered more Newcastle United fans than it has excited for the season.
The Magpies need a right-winger and a centre-back and have been spending weeks trying to sign Marc Guehi from Crystal Palace. They have wasted precious time attempting to sign a priority target but swiftly agreed terms to sign a player they don’t really need.
Leaving Sheffield United for Newcastle is a lovely step up for Osula, mind.
Omari Kellyman
We all know what happened here but that doesn’t stop us from questioning it. This transfer is riddled in profit and sustainability suspiciousness and is as dodgy as Newcastle United giving Nottingham Forest £20m for Odysseas Vlachodimos after agreeing to sell Elliot Anderson to them for £35m.
Chelsea have made some really strange decisions in recent years and signing Kellyman, valued at £850,000 by Transfermarkt, for £18m is certainly up there. It will be interesting to see how many minutes Enzo Maresca hands him this season. We can’t imagine it will be too many. We’re going none.
Regardless, the 18-year-old is now on a six-year contract at Stamford Bridge and is pretty well known across the country when the vast majority of us, probably including Maresca, hadn’t heard of him in May.
Bryan Gil
Similar to the curious case of Emerson, Spanish winger Gil has landed himself a move to Champions League outfit Girona having failed to impress at Spurs.
We aren’t sure why the Londoners spent £20m and gave up Erik Lamela for him. We also aren’t sure how he has earned loan moves to Valencia, back to Sevilla, and now at Girona. Some players simply have excellent representatives and this must be the case with Gil.
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