Since the beginning of the 2015-16 season, Chelsea have sanctioned 90 different loan
deals, scattering players across Europe and beyond. It’s a satellite system with a traditional
function, providing a crucial next-step and first-team minutes for developing players,
but it’s also a strange netherworld, full of quirky anecdotes, unseen careers and hidden
value.
Chelsea’s loan army is complex and fascinating. It also has its own WhatsApp group.
At the time of his release in 2018, Matej Delac was Chelsea’s longest-serving player,
having signed for the club in 2010. Inter Zapresic were paid a reported £2.5m for a
goalkeeper who had, even at 17, already been called up to Croatia’s senior international
squad.
Each year, he would faithfully return to Cobham for pre-season, before bouncing out on loan.
Between 2010 and 2017, Delac would have spells in Holland (Vitesse), Czech Republic (Dynamo
Ceske Budejovice), Portugal (Vitoria di Guimaraes), back in his native Croatia (Zapresic), Serbia
(Vojvodina), Bosnia twice (FK Sarajevo), France (Arles-Avignon) and Belgium (Excel Mouscron).
Finally, in 2018, following his contract’s expiration, he packed his bags, said his digital
farewells on WhatsApp and joined Danish side AC Horsens.
To some, Delac is a punchline – a victim of scarce opportunity and someone who, ultimately,
wasn’t quite good enough to be a Chelsea player for real. A more reasoned analysis,
however, would pitch him as part of a system which isn’t built solely to supplement the
first team.
In fact, the mistake with Chelsea’s loanees has always been to believe in the primacy
of that objective. Another fallacy is to see their array of talent, at home and abroad,
as a figurative queue leading to Stamford Bridge.
In fact, very few of the players in Chelsea’s loan system could claim to have been denied
an opportunity. It seems unlikely for instance, that players like Cristian Cuevas, Danilo
Pantic, or Nathan were only a lucky break away from enjoying Premier League-level careers.
Which isn’t to say that Chelsea erred by signing them in the first place. In fact,
the club have actually shown themselves to be extremely adept at manoeuvring their pieces
around the board, collecting loan fees, stage-managing players’ profiles, reputations and value
and finally, where appropriate, timing their departures.
In simple terms, they recognise the existence of a market which is detached from their footballing
aims.
While he was in the system, attacking-midfielder Nathan provided a good example. A Brazilian
youth international who joined from Atletico Paranaense in 2015 for just £3.6m, he spent
two years on loan at Vitesse, before splitting the 2017-18 season between Amiens in France
and Portugal’s Belenenses. In July 2018, he was sent back to Brazil on a two-year loan
to Atletico Mineiro before, in July 2020, making that move permanent for £2.7m.
Without any privileged information, it’s still easy to see the club’s working. How,
in the first instance, he was provided a soft landing in European football at Vitesse, a
club with whom Chelsea enjoy a long standing technical partnership, before he was advanced
into a more testing environment in France.
It was not a success and that seems to have instructed a different process – one designed
to help Nathan recover his value and reputation, rather than prepare him in any way for English
football. In 2018, when he returned to his native Brazil, Chelsea only made a £900,000
loss on what they original paid and did so in the depressed, post-covid market.
So, while easy to dismiss as failure, the episode really demonstrated how robust Chelsea’s
loan system is and how sound their accompanying theories are. In essence, they had speculated
on a gifted, attacking player from a fashionable part of the football world. They paid a small
fee to sign him, subsidised his wages with loan agreements, and positioned him at teams
which may have allowed his skills to develop and his value to appreciate.
Neither really happened and yet, from a financial perspective, Chelsea will most likely have
earned a small profit from their relationship with Nathan. Not bad for a worst case scenario.
Of course, the ability to do that is very much a privilege of their position. There
aren’t many clubs who could have afforded to commit nearly £4m to a slow yielding asset,
fewer still with the capital to do so again and again over many years and with dozens
of players.
Nevertheless and despite Chelsea’s loan network often being the subject of public
mirth, they have always been both an important protection against Financial Fair Play and
a part compensation for their inability to expand Stamford Bridge or improve their static
matchday income.
There are more vivid examples of the dynamic in action. Thorgan Hazard arrived at Stamford
Bridge in 2012 for less than £500,000. Three years later, after a successful loan to Borussia
Monchengladbach – which, according to Transfermarkt.co.uk, was worth in the region of £1.4m – he was
sold to the Bundesliga club for £7.2m.
Christian Atsu is another. He joined Chelsea from Porto in 2013, for a reported 2.7m, and
would never make a first-team appearance. He would join Newcastle in 2017 for £6.75m
– a not insignificant profit – but after loans at Vitesse, Bournemouth, Malaga and,
as a precursor to his permanent move, St James’ Park. Viewed from those angles, Hazard and
Atsu are less players, more football bonds – little industries, even.
Add to that list Mario Pasalic, who was bought for £2.25m in 2014 and then, after five different
loans, sold to Atalanta for £13.5m. Or Kenedy, who is on his fourth European loan. Or Lucas
Piazon, who has recently embarked upon his seventh. Or Tomas Kalas, who also had seven
separate loans, before being sold to Bristol City for over £8m and a profit.
In the abstract, Chelsea are the fully stocked garage of European football, with tools for
hire and eventual sale to those who need them. Their loan network is an economy of its own.
No, they have never been a club of optimal efficiency, either in the buying or selling
of players, or just in the identification of their future value (De Bruyne/Salah). Where
they do lead the market, however, is in the recognition of a footballer’s broader worth
and what the best ways are to capitalise on that value.