The London-based club have reportedly reached an agreement with Atletico Madrid to pay €11m to sign Felix on loan for the rest of the season while also covering his full salary with no option to buy.
The move speaks to Chelsea’s financial might under spendthrift owner Todd Boehly, but perhaps more importantly, shows the American’s incompetence in football transfer deals.
Todd Boehly the clumsy American
The start of the Todd Boehly era at Stamford Bridge was met with skepticism, which – to be fair – is almost always the case with Americans buying European clubs, fueled by the perceived notion of their lack of requisite knowledge.
Boehly has attempted to counter this line of thinking by openly involving himself in the day-to-day management of his newly purchased club, but this strategy has only so far exposed his lack of knowledge further.
The awkward American narrative was reinforced when he named himself club president and interim sporting director on June 20, 2022, and his naive posturing in the transfer window didn’t change that much.
It turns out that the only thing worse than an uninvolved, indifferent, profit-driven American owner (i.e. the Glazers, Stan Kroenke, FSG) is a bawdy American owner who is too involved.
Boehly has now sanctioned the signing of a 23-year-old Atletico Madrid flop, which the club will now pay €11m for while also covering his full €280,000-a-week wage for five months and no option to buy.
There’s a reason neither Arsenal nor Manchester United offered to sign Felix despite eyeing the player for so long, but Atletico’s demands were just too stiff and borderline unreasonable.
It’s hard to imagine anyone with real football knowledge and know-how in the football transfer market would have agreed to these terms, but that’s where Todd Boehly comes in, the incompetent American with a long list of transfer errors.
Todd Boehly’s transfer mistakes
The mistakes Chelsea have made so far in the transfer window do not necessarily refer to the performance of the signed players, it only considers the nuance in the transfer negotiations.
There’s a reason why Chelsea look so bad as a team despite spending over €300m in the summer and winter windows so far and that’s entirely on. Boehly.
The first mistake was the devaluation of Romelu Lukaku, leaving the club-record signing to join Inter Milan on a season-long loan for 8 million euros (3 million euros less than what he are currently paying to loan out Joao Felix for five months).
Boehly, as Chelsea sporting director, negotiated a €38m transfer fee for the signing of Kalidou Koulibaly, a 31-year-old defender who had just one year left on his contract at Napoli at the time. ‘era.
All of these factors surrounding Koulibaly at the time put Chelsea in a leveraged position to sign him for a significantly cheaper price, but Boehly’s incompetence in the European transfer market saw him bullied by the president. of Naples, Aurelio Di Laurentis.
Brighton reportedly wanted around €55m to part ways with Marc Cucurella (who Manchester City were reluctant to pay), but Boehly somehow found a way to pay €65m plus a Levi Colwill loan the other way to bring the Spanish left-back back to Stamford. Bridge.
The signings of teenage midfielders Carney Chukwuemeka and Cesare Casadei for over €30m combined have also raised eyebrows.
They’re both obviously more forward-looking, but that hefty transfer fee for Chukwuemeka with three starts for Aston Villa and Casadei who had never even played for Inter Milan’s first team is another in Boehly’s blunder case.
Todd Boehly is fast becoming known for paying above the odds in his reign at Chelsea so far and the transfer of the Joao Felix loan deal follows that pattern.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Pulse Sports