€60m valuation should mean Chelsea star stays – fans would riot if he goes after long wait | OneFootball

SportWitness do a really good job of translation interesting stories picked up overseas, and that’s just what they’ve done today with a piece in Catalan paper Sport about Andrey Santos.

The angle they take is about Barcelona’s interest in the midfielder. Barca wanted him back in January 2023, when Chelsea signed him. At that point, their current sporting director Deco was just a consultant, and had pushed for Santos a year before. They made an offer of €1.5m, with another €3.5m in bonuses. It was turned down.

A year later, he moved to Chelsea for €12.5m.

Santos shoots towards the stars, looks ready for Chelsea

Andrey Santos in Strasbourg training.

Since then – one dodgy loan to Nottingham Forest aside – it’s been an upwards trajectory for Santos. He continued playing regularly in Brazil, and in the last 18 months has been superb for Strasbourg on loan. He just announced his departure from our French sister club, so the question is where he goes next.

All expectations are that he comes to Chelsea. He looked ready last summer, and certainly should be now. He will add a lot to a midfield that needs options, depth and some new qualities. It’s no surprise that Barcelona are frustrated in having missed out on him for such a low price a couple of years ago.

Possible sale should not be on the cards for talented Santos

However, there’s always the spectre of a possible sale hanging over the situation. This piece claims that Bayern Munich are interested, and that Chelsea would demand €50m plus €10m in bonuses. Of course that’s a huge profit on the €12.5m we paid, but you won’t find many Chelsea fans keen on taking it.

We signed him to play for the first team and his development has been great – we’re not doing this to build up players for our rivals, we’re buying these talent to improve our first team.

At least, we hope we are.