Romano: “Chelsea said no” to selling young talent pushing for first team return next year | OneFootball

Andrey Santos is getting a lot of attention at the moment after starting the season so strongly on loan with Strasbourg.

He hasn’t been called up for the Brazil squad for the upcoming international break, but the very fact that that is a surprise shows how far he has come.

One person mentioning him in the last few hours is Fabrizio Romano, who is starting to wake from his hibernation now we’re just two months away from the opening of the January transfer window.

“Today Enzo Maresca said in his press conference that Santos could be an option for the future for Chelsea. My thoughts are that Maresca wanted to keep the situation without too much pressure. Santos is doing fantastically so they don’t want to put too much pressure on the boy, who is young,” Romano explained.

“But internally at Chelsea, the directors and the owners and all the people at the club believe that Andrey Santos will absolutely be a part of the Chelsea project. They had the possibility to sell the player last summer, Chelsea said no. They always wanted to have Andrey Santos as part of the project.”

You can see Romano speaking in the clip embedded here, with this answer coming after 7 minutes:

Andrey Santos in a nice mountain valley with the sun.

Santos an exciting project to follow as Chelsea plan a year ahead

Santos’ progress is one of the most exciting things happening at Chelsea outside of the first team right now. We will be watching closely for the rest of this season, and eagerly awaiting what the plan is for this summer.

Surely next season will be his chance in the Chelsea first team. Cesare Casadei is not getting many minutes, even Enzo Fernandez is out of favour. Santos would seem a great backup for either of our two current first team midfield options, Romeo Lavia and Moises Caicedo.

The fact that he can add goals to that midfield could make him even more important.