This whole pre-transfer window transfer window is good fun, isn’t it? A deadline day before deadline day. A flash open market for all created before a tournament only 32 teams are in.
Forget, for a second, the sheer ludicrous formation of the Club World Cup, what it is, why it exists, the total disregard for player welfare, and the ridiculous finances involved, and you can almost enjoy the irony of just what football has become in 2025. Except you can’t really enjoy it, because it’s crazy and it’s dumb.
There is so much money at stake at the recrafted FIFA tournament (which quite literally nobody in the host country cares about) that teams are willing to pay £8million to get a player three weeks early. The days of a June release clause are over, it’s now a June 1-10 release clause.
If there’s a way to kick teams into gear and to make them act quickly, it’s to tempt them with a winning bonus of £94million and an audience in America. We’re still not sure how this is working, where the funding is from, or what the need is, but the suits at clubs who are involved are taking it seriously.
So that’s why we have Real Madrid buying Trent Alexander-Arnold, effectively, for a maximum of three matches. It’ll be £3million or so per game. They are anticipating such problems against Al-Hilal, Pachuca, and RB Leipzig under Xabi Alonso, that they simply cannot risk being without a new right-back for the group stage. The rebuild most not be halted any longer.
A reminder: Alexander-Arnold could join and be part of the Madrid squad for the knockout stages for free thanks to the second registration window. But no. If football clubs can, football clubs will. Football clubs rarely have and increasingly never do stop to think if they should.
This is all why Chelsea, who have so often left business down to the last minute after stringing things along all summer, have been sharp themselves. Liam Delap is in. Mike Maignan is in talks to follow him. Jamie Gittens is heading in one direction right now.
That is three out of the four major deals Chelsea needed in the summer and they could all be addressed within 10 days. It takes time prior to the window opening to get to this point but it is, among other things, a positive sign for Chelsea.
The way to kick them into action is to imagine every week is the final week of the window. That’s how illogical this whole thing is. You can’t have a transfer saga if there isn’t enough time to build up steam.
Jules Kounde and Frenkie de Jong from 2022 and 2023 would be ashamed. This isn’t how transfer drama is meant to happen. It has to be long, drawn out, and completely tedious.
The transfer window has only just opened and we already have teams setting deadlines for each other. Rules are being made up on the fly because nobody has done this like this before.
Chelsea have reportedly told Maignan and Milan that they will not be negotiating past Monday. Given that the deadline for group stage transfers to be completed is on Tuesday, it’s probably no surprise.
This brings us to Victor Osimhen. Now he knows how to do a transfer saga. Chelsea and Osimhen have been dancing a tango for some years now. In 2023, after firing Napoli to the Serie A title, he could easily have left like his manager, Luciano Spalletti.
The only surprise was that six months later he signed a new contract. Nobody made any bones about Osimhen staying for the 2024/25 season, though.
Antonio Conte had him out of the team before he had even arrived. Chelsea, looking for a striker to take the pressure off Nicolas Jackson after his impressive first season, knew of this.
They left things far too late. It was only in the final fortnight that Osimhen really became an option. It took too long and nothing got through. Instead, Chelsea’s search for an elite striker was ended after they failed to agree on wages. It has come back to bite everyone.
Osimhen has never made any attempts to hide his enormous demands. He was open to a move to Saudi Arabia 12 months ago after nobody in Europe was willing to match him. Napoli got in the way that time. Then the game of cat and mouse came to an end.
Galatasaray took Osimhen after the European window closed and watched him score 26 times in 30 league matches, won the title, and then said farewell. Maybe they are the big victors. They reportedly only had to pay £5million to have Osimhen. Under no illusions that it would extend beyond this one year, all parties got what they needed.
Now Osimhen’s name has been thrown around again this summer. He was never staying in Turkey and returning to Napoli was off the table as well. There are plenty of teams after a striker but nobody on the same wavelength as 26-year-old Osimhen.
His total cost is simply too much. A £63million release clause isn’t extortionate but to match his wages and bonuses is simply not a route that any clear-thinking club is going to agree to.
There are claims that Osimhen has an appearance bonus and an availability bonus, just in case he doesn’t play. Some have floated the idea that he will get £40,000 if he is available and doesn’t play. If he is fit, he wants to ensure he gets a load of cash regardless of what the manager has planned.
This is the sort of thing that doesn’t fit with hyper-business clubs. Rightly or not, stuff of this scale just isn’t the way anymore. People are too smart and reserved (or at least they think they are), until of course, they aren’t. So it’s over to Saudi again.
Al-Hilal, in Madrid’s Club World Cup group, have made an offer to Napoli for Osimhen and they are expecting an answer by the close of play on Friday. They will trigger the release clause and have set aside £25million per season in wages. It was money they had put away for Mohamed Salah.
Chelsea have been linked again with a deal never truly ruled out but it’s easy to understand why nothing went anywhere. This is money of a different level that Old Chelsea would not have paid, let alone New Chelsea.
Osimhen does have the match-winning ability to rival anyone on the continent but it is hard to justify splashing out to this extreme on one player. He is two years removed from his one and only elite season in a top league.
The returns both before and after winning the Scudetto with Napoli have been good and exceptional in Turkey but that comes with a pinch of Viktor Gyokeres in Portugal salt. Osimhen may well be Chelsea coded but he is also out of the price range of anyone around.
It is good for everyone associated with Chelsea that it appears his future is being wrapped up early. The last thing Chelsea needed as they pursue another striker this summer to go alongside Liam Delap (maybe Hugo Ekitike?) is the noise around Osimhen.
It was a potential deal made in fantasy land rather than reality. No amount of John Obi Mikel manifesting could push this through. There is a good argument that Chelsea could and should have made a bigger play to buy him last season and the year before that, in Mikel’s defence. At this stage, he is too far gone down the Saudi hole to come to terms with.
That is a shame for all. Osimhen deserves the biggest stage, not the richest one. The Champions League and Premier League are calling out for someone of Osimhen’s undoubted calibre. But it surely isn’t to be.
If this is what the Club World Cup does then great, we don’t have to worry about these sorts of sagas for months on end. But if the figures involve continue to grow to such outrageous levels then things are too far gone to bother worrying about anyway.
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