According David Ornstein of The Athletic, Chelsea have submitted a bid worth £27.4m (€32.5m) for Atletico Madrid striker Samu Omorodion, but will have to dig a little deeper if they want to reach a deal.
The Spanish under-21 international, of Nigerian descent, has a release clause of £67.56 million (€80 million), which Atleti insist they will have to meet to sell the centre-forward, a fee that Chelsea has no intention. to pay.
Striker is clearly an area that new coach Enzo Maresca is looking to strengthen, with Nicolas Jackson, Armando Broja and David Datro Fofana being his current senior options. Jacob Steinberg in The Guardian claims that they are eager to sell Broja to Evertonwhile Fofana's future is also uncertain, after a loan at Burnley.
Already this summer the 'bleus' tried to sign Jhon Duran of Aston Villawhile Adam Leventhal writes in The Athletic They would like to bring academy graduate Dominic Solanke back to Stamford Bridge, although his own £65million release clause means a move for the Bournemouth striker is unlikely to come to fruition.
Who is Samu Omorodion?
Samu Omorodion is a 20-year-old striker who began his senior career at Granada, before joining Altético Madrid for £5 million last summer.
On the opening day of last season he scored in Graná's 3-1 defeat at the Cívitas Metropolitano, but he clearly attracted attention when the Colchoneros signed him a week later.
He then spent the rest of the season on loan at Deportivo Alavés, helping the blue and white team to a very respectable tenth place finish in La Liga, scoring eight goals in 35 appearances, averaging one goal every 240 minutes.
This may not sound all that impressive, but he was still by some distance Alavés' top scorer, as Luis García Plaza's side scored just 36 goals in the entire campaign, the lowest of any team that finished in the rank 14 or higher.
He has also scored twice in Spain's European Under-21 Championship qualifiers so far, against Kazakhstan in Astana and Belgium in Leuven last autumn, and will likely be a key player in Santi Denia's team at the tournament. next summer in Slovakia.
The arrival of Omorodion would be a continuation of Chelsea's transfer strategy
Since Clearlake Capital took control of Chelsea, led by Todd Boehly, Behdad Eghbali and José E. Feliciano, they have obviously spent a lot of money on transfer market, around £982 million to be exact, with their strategy, at least in theory, of buying young, promising players before anyone knows about them.
Mykhailo Mudryk, Malo Gusto, Benoît Badiashile, Noni Madueke, Andrey Santos, Cesare Casadei, Carney Chukwuemeka, Gaga Słonina, Lesley Ugochukwu, Đorđe Petrović, Axel Disasi, Deivid Washington and many others (we could go on!) certainly fit this profile. so the potential signing of Omorodion would suggest that, despite finishing 12th and then 6th to date, the owners are sticking to their blueprint.
