There are excited whispers abounding today about the potential of Pau Cubarsi, the latest wonderkid to come from the Barcelona academy, making a move away.
Caught Offside are among the sites reporting that the 17 year old sensation has a €10m (£8.57m) release clause in his current youth contract. Of course once he turns 18, the Catalan club are certain to offer him a monster new deal with a huge new release clause in it.
But in the old days, Chelsea would right now be tapping him up as hard as possible, trying to get him into a situation like we saw with Gerard Pique and Cesc Fabregas back in the day, where they rejected major first team offers from Barca to come to the Premier League on senior player wages.
But are Chelsea really in this race? Can they offer anything that Barcelona can’t, let alone teams like Manchester City who are inevitably also linked with the prodigy, who has already played well in massive Champions League games.
Getting real about transfers
This is a moment where sadly, Chelsea fans are going to have to get real about our current situation. We’ve been spoiled for 20 years, effectively able to sign anyone we wanted. As long as they weren’t an untouchable starter at one of the 4 or 5 biggest clubs in the world, we had the means and the draw to bring them in.
That is no longer the case. Barcelona are going through a bad spell, but the idea that we are going to persuade a home grown player to leave the Nou Camp to come and finish 12th at Stamford Bridge is just laughable.
We face a long road back to the top if we want to be a genuinely tempting offer for any player already at a top club.
