Tuchel admits Chelsea could have signed Messi and 2 others world class players ahead of Lukaku
Ahead of new season, Chelsea have finally signed up a top striker as the Blues secure Romelu Lukaku deal from Inter Milan for a fee of £97.5m.
However, Reports had claimed that Chelsea were keen on signing Erling Haaland from Borussia Dortmund but had to settle for Lukaku, due to Dortmund’s reluctance to sell their striker.
In his first pre-match conference ahead of the new Premier League season, Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel seemed to have a good time in front of the media.
The Blues boss rather joked that Chelsea wanted to get not only Haaland, but Robert Lewandowski and Lionel Messi.
When asked if Haaland had been Chelsea’s first choice – and if the club had wanted to partner the two forwards up front together – the German coach replied sarcastically: “Yeah we tried for both.”
He further joked: “We tried both and wanted to have [Robert] Lewandowski on the number 10 behind but unfortunately the board didn’t listen so we need to be happy with only Romelu!”
Told that he could also have signed Lionel Messi on a free transfer too, Tuchel continued: “Yeah, we missed a lot of opportunities out there on the transfer market, that’s why you find me very upset and we don’t know how we should continue.”
Now becoming serious, Tuchel said: “No, honestly, we had a certain profile and like I said, we are very happy with the attitude and the mentality of the group and we want to protect it.
“It’s not a given that a group works like this group and this is a very precious thing and a thing that can be decisive in football and in my opinion it is decisive.
“We are careful with this group and we want to protect it so it was not about bringing the most possible amount of players into this group.
“It’s about we have to be sure that the players, of course good enough and talented enough, that it’s in the right state of mind that he has also something to give from his personality that improves us.
“And we were as sure as we could be – and in any transfer there are like always issues and doubts – but we could be very, very sure with Romelu because he knows the club and he knows what Chelsea is about, so we are happy that it’s like this.”