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There's little doubt that Antoine Griezmann is a quality player, an intriguing prospect, and at just 23 years old, a young man with a very bright future. There's also little doubt that he's not long for the only club where he's played so far professionally, with Real Sociedad soon to be beneficiaries of a very tidy transfer fee from one of the major powers of European football, be that Manchester United or Real Madrid or PSG or any of the other usual suspects.
Which is where Chelsea come in, as one of the usual suspects. Need to link a player for a transfer rumor? Call Chelsea! But while there's a good chance that Griezmann, fresh off a decent showing for France at the World Cup, gets his big money move and payday this summer, there's not much chance, if any at all, that Chelsea will be the ones giving it to him. Certainly not at this time, with the club seemingly recovered from an addiction of acquiring all the tricksy attacking midfielders and finally turning attentions to proper midfielders (Matic and even Tiago or Fabregas in slightly misguided ways), proper strikers (the DC-19 Bomber), and proper full backs (whenever Filipe Luis decides to finally join).
It is in this context that spending upwards of €30m on another attacking midfielder makes very little sense. Sure, Willian was brought in under similar circumstances last summer, but, again, the hope is that we've learned our lesson and are striving to create a truly balanced squad to win us a league title.
It's certainly not helping that today's rumors that spread like wildfire on Twitter were started by a Real Sociedad fan blog.
EXCLUSIVA: Griezmann, como decíamos antes en primicia, se va al #Chelsea. A parte del amistoso de este verano, jugarán otro el próx. año...
— f9RealSociedad (@f9RealSociedad) July 14, 2014
Talk about reading a bit too much into a preseason friendly. For whatever reason, Kike Marin decided to retweet it (since deleted) and even though he RT'd with the opinion that it's a far-fetched fantasy, many people ignored that bit and thus a rumor was born.
Sinceramente, no me creo lo del #Chelsea y Griezmann. Demasiado bueno para la #RealSociedad para ser cierto. 25 m £= 32,25M€ !!!!!
— Kike Marin** (@Kike_Marin_) July 14, 2014
@CescyPass I don't know. Sorry for RT!!!
— Kike Marin** (@Kike_Marin_) July 14, 2014
Previous mentions of Griezmann and Chelsea include throwaway lines in Telegraph rumor roundups and some unsourced Express guessing.
So basically this is a sure thing and he's joining tomorrow.