Chelsea loan Lucas Piazon to Vitesse for the season

Lucas Piazón is set to join Gaël Kakuta, Patrick van Aanholt, and Cristián Cuevas at the GelreDome in Arnhem, as our good friends at SBV Vitesse in the Netherlands have been deemed fit enough to oversee the development of a fourth Chelsea youngster as well for this season.  One step closer to Chelsea B then.

Neither club has confirmed the deal yet; the news comes directly from Piazón's public relations guy.

The footballer Lucas Piazon was loaned to Vitesse/HOL for Chelsea FC, where they will play next season.

— Fabiano de Souza (@fabianodesouza) August 8, 2013

That's the terse English version that followed a slightly more detailed "statement" (i.e. series of tweets) in Portuguese. Here's a translation of those, from TheChels.net:

"As part of his career development, Chelsea FC have decided to loan Lucas Piazon to the Dutch club Vitesse for the 2013-14 season, with no buyout fee in the contract. The same happened to players who are now a part of Chelsea’s first team squad, as Marko van Ginkel and Tomas Kalas also had a spell at the Dutch club to gain experience. This is a common process at the major European clubs and Lucas goes to Holland with the chance to play regularly and gain the experience required for his future career."

After last year's brief stint at Málaga and having expressed interest earlier this summer in going on loan perhaps in the Premier League, this may well seem to be a step backwards for the 19-year-old.  Still, it's not the end of the world and at least he should be able to get plenty of minutes in what's looking like a very youthful Vitesse side (Gaël Kakuta is the third oldest midfielder in the squad).

Vitesse opened their league season with a 3-1 home win vs. Heracles last week, but unfortunately their Europa League campaign came to an abrupt end earlier on Thursday when a 95th minute free kick eliminated them in the third round qualifiers.