Chelsea will move for £60million-rated Antoine Griezmann in the summer if Eden Hazard pushes to join either Real Madrid or Paris Saint-Germain.
The Frenchman, 24, who has been superb for Atletico Madrid in the past two seasons and is one of the most-wanted attacking players in European football, has previously been deemed off limits by the Spanish club, who were facing a FIFA transfer ban in the summer and in January 2017 for signing underage players.
Yet that ban has now been suspended for this summer while an appeal is heard, meaning Griezmann, who has a £60m buy-out clause — the most-expensive in the history of Atletico Madrid — could be allowed to leave, as the funds would allow the club to rebuild before having to miss out on the next two transfer windows.
Paris Saint-Germain also want to bring the Frenchman back home and make him the focal point of their team, with Zlatan Ibrahimovich’s contract up at the end of the season.
Yet with Real Madrid and PSG also now monitoring Hazard’s future, Griezmann, an attacking player comfortable in wide positions or centrally, would be a natural replacement should Hazard be allowed to leave.
Hazard has endured a miserable season at Chelsea since being voted Player of the Year for 2014-15 and appeared to be unhappy under previous manager Jose Mourinho, even if he publicly insisted he was not. Some Chelsea fans branded him a ‘rat’ for failing, in their eyes, to perform for Mourinho.
Yet Hazard signed a five-year-deal only last year and Chelsea insist he will continue to be one of their key players for years to come.
Interim manager Guus Hiddink hopes that, even if there are big bids for Hazard in the summer, the club will reject them. ‘It’s not up to me, it’s up to the club,’ said Hiddink. ‘When he gets his rhythm back, then he’s of big value to Chelsea.
‘I don’t want to step on the strategy of the club but he’s a very important player, a nice player. He has this injury and that came back in the Palace game [on January 3]. That has been an unstable situation for at least two months. Hopefully he is coming back to where he was before. He needs training and game fitness and you get that by playing games.’
And Hiddink insisted that Hazard can still get back to last season’s form in the final four months of this season. ‘For the club, beautiful times can come up from him and on top of that there is a Euros coming up,’ he said. ‘Everyone who is a candidate for being a big player in the upcoming time, then the Euros, it’s a beautiful period.’
Controversial forward Bertrand Traore, meanwhile, will be given his chance to prove he can be a long-term solution to Chelsea’s issues with strikers after he impressed playing for the Under-21s last week in front of Hiddink and Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich
Hiddink invited Abramovich down to the training ground specifically for the match against QPR and the Chelsea owner has been a frequent visitor to Cobham in the past two weeks. And though it was another striker, Patrick Bamford, who grabbed the immediate limelight with two goals, Hiddink was impressed with Traore’s all-round performance and convened a meeting afterwards to insist the 20-year-old Burkina Faso international will have first-team opportunities in the next four months.
Ironically, the performance came in the week in which FIFA began to probe whether Chelsea had breached rules regarding the transfer of young players by using him in an Under-18 friendly match against Arsenal in 2011 when aged 16. Chelsea are confident they have not breached the rules and he only officially signed for Chelsea after his 18th birthday, when such moves are officially allowed under FIFA rules.
It is understood Hiddink invited Abramovich down for the QPR game because he wanted to convince the owner of the quality the club has in its junior ranks and prepare for blooding some youngsters in the first team.
Africanjam
is website that was launched in December
2013 (with another domain) and on April 2014 the new domain Africanjam(dot)com
came into use. It was found by John Kapela who is currently in Dar es Salaam
Tanzania. This site provides news from Africa and all over the world in
Politics, Sports and Entertainment. We also provide Technology tips, some
Amazing Facts as well as Football updates from all over the world. Visit this
site everyday for being in touch with everything happening in Africa and the
whole world.
