07/19/2022 at 10:36
IT IS
The English club got away with asking Barça for 10 million euros for his transfer
He also tried to convince the player by showing him his performance stats and pointing out that it would be very difficult to find a replacement for him.
Cesar Azpilicueta This is one of Barca’s big goals to strengthen the defence, but the transfer operation is not easy: while it looked like the Navarrese could be released last June, a clause in his contract allowed Chelsea to unilaterally extend his contract for another season .
The situation therefore forces the three parties involved (Chelsea, Barça and the footballer) to play your letters in the negotiation: the player wants to leave the English club to sign for Barça; Barça wants him at all costs (Xavi has called him several times to clarify this) and Chelsea, for their part, are trying to retain him.
With the change in ownership of Chelsea (American Todd Boehly is the club’s new ownerafter the forced departure of Abramovich), the English club deployed all their artillery to try to prevent ‘Azpi’ from leaving Stamford Bridge.
For starters, Chelsea got off the hook by asking Barca to pay €10m to release Azpilicueta. Chelsea negotiators knew that it was too high an amountbecause of the player’s age (32) and because of Barça’s weak economic capacity.
Chelsea’s intention was for Barca to consider the player a loss. The azulgrana club never considered paying this amount, but continued to insist on lowering the price.
The Chelsea’s second ‘stratagem’ concerned the player himself: Although Chelsea’s new owner knows firsthand that ‘Azpi’ wants to go to Barca, he tried to convince him with a curious mix, halfway between personal empathy and data.
The help of “big data”
Chelsea owners sat down with Azpilicueta and they showed him a series of parameters extracted from a data analysis program: minutes, recoveries, kilometers traveled, balls recovered, heat maps, etc.
According to this information, it would be impossible for Chelsea to find a player of Azpilicueta’s level on the market. This is the argument used by Chelsea managers to try to convince him to continue at Stamford Bridge.
AzpilicuetaStill, he wants to play for Barca: he considers him to be the perfect age to do so, the opportunity is unbeatable and, in addition, he wants to return to Spain. That’s why he didn’t give in to Chelsea’s attempts; that’s why he will be from Barca before August 31.