Chelsea’s transfer strategy at the moment has been criticised from all angles, and now we’ve even got someone who has been on the inside criticising it.
Alessandro Pizzoli worked at the club as a scout between 2019 and 2022, and says that one of the players he suggested to the club in that time was Cesare Casadei.
“I proposed Casadei when I first arrived at Chelsea, he was playing at Under-17 level and cost €180,000. He was not considered good enough and turned down, but then when he cost €20m, that’s when they bought him,” Pizzoli explained in quotes picked up by Football Italia.
“That’s how it works there, they have a different mentality.”
Along with our strategy of letting Brighton sign great South American talents and then buying them for 20 times the price later on, this is what’s wrong with our current setup. All this wasted money has to come from somewhere and at the moment it looks like it’s going to come from selling off our own academy talents.
A little more forward thinking would make us a lot more competitive on the pitch, and a lot more profitable off it. Hopefully as this ownership matures we will see more and more of that, and hear fewer horror stories like the one above.
C’mon, I’m confident EVERY club has numerous stories like this. If judging the future prospects of every teenager was a science then the big clubs would be producing every young starlet in world football—but it’s not, and they’re not! Nor is it the case that we can snap up every young talent that comes recommended to us at age 17 (even if the price tag is relatively cheap)!
So, yes, Chelsea, like City or Barca or any other big club, is going to miss out on signing the occasional generational talent on the cheap, but the difference here is that once we became convinced that Casadei was such a talent we went and got him! As he so often does, SuperFrank wants to indict the club using 20/20 hindsight, but that seems like a pretty cheap shot under the circumstances (especially given that Casadei hasn’t proven anything yet).
Are you saying it’s a great deal buying £20m when it could have less than £128k, Still unbelievably less business idea for me. Guys out there have no vision and less Chelsea at heart, quite sure!
Another prime example of just how useless the media have become the current owners took over May 30th 2022 so what do they have to do with 2019 until May 29th 2022? Fact is Casadei WAS signed in summer 2022 Mr Pioli looking to stay relevant and after publicity.