Chelsea’s defense spending is on the rise

Chelsea have announced the signing of French defender Wesle Fofan from Leicester City. This deal could potentially be a record. According to L’Equipe, total payouts for the 21-year-old could reach €87.5 million. If that happens, Fofana will be the most expensive defender in history, surpassing Harry Maguire’s record.

Chelsea and Leicester have closed a deal to sell 21-year-old French defender Wesle Fofan to the London club. He signed a seven-year contract with the London club and has already managed to spend the first training session with his new team.

According to L’Equipe, the parties agreed that Chelsea will pay €82.5 million for the player. Leicester will not get the whole amount. The latter acquired Fofan in 2020 from Saint-Étienne for €35 million, with the condition that he transfer an additional 20% of the proceeds from the subsequent sale of the player to the French team. That is, Saint-Etienne can claim another € 9.5 million. However, the agreement with Chelsea also provides that Leicester can count on bonuses for the achievement of a number of parameters by the player. They could amount to €5 million. It turns out that if Fofana plays effectively in a new team, the total amount of payments for him will be €87.5 million. This is quite a bit, but still more than the record set in 2019, when the same Leicester sold Harry Maguire to Manchester United for €87 million, which made him the most expensive defender in history. Aside from Maguire and Fofan, only three defenders have been worth €80m or more, according to Transfermarkt. In 2019, Juventus bought Matthijs de Ligt from Ajax for €85.5m, while Bayern paid Atlético €80m for Lucas Hernandez. Well, a year earlier, Virgil van Dijk moved for €84.5 million from Southampton to Liverpool.

After the deal with Fofana was closed, the expenses of Chelsea, which is conducting the first transfer campaign after the change of ownership (recall that in the spring Roman Abramovich, who owned the club since 2003, was forced to sell the team to the American Todd Böhli under pressure from the British authorities), have already reached € 270 million Londoners made six purchases in total. The cheapest, only € 9 million, was the goalkeeper Gabriel Slonina. Londoners paid twice as much for midfielder Karni Chukwuemek, Kalidou Koulibaly cost €38m, and finally, the transfer of winger Raheem Sterling cost more than €56m. If Chelsea manage to complete another big deal before the transfer window closes at midnight Thursday, Londoners even could break the all-time record for amplification spending in a single summer. The Londoners’ biggest target is Leipzig Croatian defender Joshko Guardiol, who is being asked for €87m. If the deal goes through, Chelsea’s spending on purchases will reach €357m. This is significantly more than the current record held by Real Madrid. Madrid spent €325.5 million on new players in the summer of 2019.

However, while the cost of strengthening Chelsea does not give the desired result. The team in the championship of England is only in eighth place. In five rounds, Chelsea won and lost twice, and drew one more match.

Alexander Petrov