What Chelsea plan for €14m signing according to top insider – two could be sold | OneFootball

The news that Chelsea were signing Renato Veiga for €14m truly came out of nowhere this summer – and it caught everyone out, including the insiders who are usually tracking these deals from their inception to completion.

Since it became clear that the Portugal youth international is coming to Chelsea, there’s been a major scramble to find out more – both about what he’s like as a player, and about what the Blues plan to do with him.

Plenty of pieces have already been written on the former, but it’s Simon Phillips who takes up the slack on the latter:

“SPTC sources have heard that it’s not 100% decided yet that if/when signed, Veiga will be staying in the first team this season. He will become one of many that Enzo Maresca will assess in pre-season, and then a decision will be made.”

Renato Veiga with Enzo Maresca inlay.

A versatile player with a versatile squad role

Of course, as Phillips points out, this is all contingent on what happens with Ben Chilwell and Marc Cucurella. Both are “available” this summer “at the right price”, although the club wouldn’t sell both.

As it stands, the situation looks like Veiga going out loan. But if one of the left backs is sold, he sticks around. Given he’s versatile enough to play in central defender too, we could also see a scenario where he sticks around in the first team squad to plug a gap left by a departing Trevoh Chalobah, for example.

He’s even capable of playing in midfield as an anchor man – so we could yet see him stick around if someone like Lesley Ugochukwu is sold.

So it looks like as well as being a versatile player on the pitch, he’s going to be a versatile chess piece in the squad building this summer too.