Maurizio Sarri was unveiled as the new manager of Chelsea last week and was brought along with Jorginho who played under Sarri at Napoli. However, with Jorginho the only signing by the Blues until now, they will be looking to make more improvements to the Chelsea side that finished a mediocre 5th position in the Premier League table last season.
Sarri will be expected to make more signings, but talks of players leaving are doing more rounds of the newspaper rather than players coming in. According to the football news, Courtois is being linked with a move to Real Madrid, and so is Eden Hazard following their stellar performances in the World Cup. But most prominently there were talks in Italy linking Chelsea record signing Alvaro Morata with a move back to Juventus in a swap deal involving Gonzalo Higuain.
Morata only moved to Chelsea at the beginning of the 2017-18 season but has failed to make a considerable impact at the club and lost his starting position to now World Cup winner Olivier Giroud. According to the sports news, Juventus rate Higuain to be around the £55 million pounds mark while Chelsea signed Morata for a fee of £65 million pounds from Juventus via Real Madrid.
So how plausible is the move? Reports from the Chelsea transfer news say that Juventus have already rejected the offer from Chelsea, but they will be looking to offload the Argentine striker for the right price.
Juventus have arguably made one of the biggest signings of the transfer window in Cristiano Ronaldo, and it only makes sense to offload Higuain and many other players in the squad to lower the wage bill. Moreover, a player of Higuain’s standard won’t be looking forward to spending a crucial season in his career on the bench. However, if Higuain does leave Juventus it will be for a cash deal instead of bringing Morata back, to accommodate Ronaldo’s significantly high wages.
Serie A fans will argue that Morata and Dybala have a good understanding of each other having played together in the 2015-16 season when they won the Serie A title. However, the scenario has changed significantly with Ronaldo coming into the picture. If Morata does come back to Turin, where would he play? Ronaldo is definitely going to play the striker just ahead of Dybala, as the left wing position will be occupied by another new signing Douglas Costa, who made his loan move from Bayern Munich permanent. Juventus are not going to bench the tricky Brazilian winger after he had a fantastic season with The Old Lady scoring six goals and racking up 13 assists. Signing Morata just to keep him on the bench seems illogical, and would be harmful for both the club and the player.
The move for signing Higuain would make perfect sense for Chelsea, as they have two strikers in Giroud and Morata who are not preferred by Sarri, and Higuain complements the Regista talents of Jorginho perfectly. That being said, the Morata swap deal is farcical for Juventus and there is no surprise if the news of the Turin club rejecting the offer is true.
