REPORT: Chelsea preparing imminent transfer announcement as £92.5m deals completed
Chelsea have plenty of work to do if they are to backup Enzo Maresca’s impressive first season at the club. After a summer of deals in 2024 which largely backfired, the manager still delivered upon expectations.
With Champions League football set to return to Stamford Bridge and the Conference League won, there is little more the Italian head coach could have done. Given that he was working with a squad which was arguably worse than the one Mauricio Pochettino finished off with, the job has been completed to good effect.
Maresca’s challenge is now a much bigger one. He will not be able to rotate as freely in Europe and must deliver more consistency in the Premier League in order to ensure that a top four/five finish does not get as squeaky as it did last in recent months.
To do this he will need reinforcements. From the group he ended with, Chelsea are lacking an elite goalkeeper, defensive experience, midfield depth, goal-producing wingers, and quality up front. For a club that has spent so much, it is quite a position to be in.
On the surface of it, this looks like a lot of business to be completed in one window. However, Chelsea do already have at least two of those areas chalked off.
Djordje Petrovic will come in to fight his corner as a genuine option for the No.1 shirt, whilst Andrey Santos and Dario Essugo provide midfield support. Estevao Willian is not the right-footed left-winger Chelsea are after but is a sprinkle of teenage stardust which could go a long way throughout the season as he is slowly and carefully integrated.
The difference between these players is that Chelsea have announced the signing of Estevao. Although the plan was always for him to remain at Palmeiras until he turned 18, as FIFA rules demand, the club still confirmed the deal in place worth a potential £51million (if all add-ons are met) last summer.
The same is not true for Essugo. Instead, Chelsea completed that in relative silence with nothing coming out publicly until March. Very little had made its way through, even in Portugal, until after the January window.
To buy Essugo, Chelsea negotiated with his parent club Sporting CP despite the player being on loan at Las Palmas in Spain. A fee of £18.5million was soon revealed by Sporting when they listed the deal on the market.
Chelsea, though, have not written about Essugo or made the transfer official. He will not join until July 1, but it is still normal for clubs to parade their new signings prior to then, regardless. They did so with Estevao, as mentioned, as well as Santos when he went back to Vasco da Gama in Brazil after his January 2023 transfer.
Mike Penders (from Genk) and Kendry Paez (Independiente del Valle) were also announced. Along with Essugo, Chelsea spent their winter working towards buying Geovany Quenda. The teenage winger will cost just over £40million.
Unlike Essugo, who will be integrated under Maresca this summer and possibly at the Club World Cup, Quenda will remain in Portugal for another year as he continues to develop. The 18-year-old is viewed as a top talent but still has a lot of rough edges to be ironed out before he becomes a genuine option for the Chelsea senior side.
They hope that by allowing him to stay in his homeland for longer, Quenda will grow and gain experience before being assessed in England in 2026. Chelsea will be working closely with Sporting to monitor his progress.
It means that Chelsea fans can already look forward to at least one transfer announcement in the coming days. Once Essugo is at Cobham and training with his new teammates, Chelsea are likely to unveil him as a worst-kept secret. There is no intention to hide his arrival, but it simply has not been communicated via the club channels as is often the case.