Chelsea target Jonathan Calleri's rumored price tag is high enough to avoid work permit issues

Whether or not Chelsea are truly interested in signing recently crowned Argentinian champions Boca Juniors's top scorer Jonathan Calleri as Radamel Falcao's replacement this January — a move predicated not only on the big name flop leaving, but Chelsea choosing to bring in a mostly unknown player — remains to be seen.  On first glance, it seems a rather far-fetched idea, but the rumors have persisted for a while now, and it wouldn't be the first time we've done something like this.  Oscar and Kenedy are just two of the more recent direct imports from South America whom we've seen have success at Chelsea.

Regardless, any such signing would have to face the dreaded work permit barrier as well.  Fortunately, as we saw with Kenedy, last summer's changes made it quite easy to ensure that any new signing gets an English work permit, as long as his transfer fee is above a certain threshold (or his wages, or both).  Keeping that in mind, L'Equipe's claim that we're buying the 22-year-old for €9m (£6.3m) seems right on point and is very close to what we paid for Kenedy in the summer (roughly £6.7m).

Interestingly, however, L'Equipe also claim that we will loan Calleri back to Boca until the summer.  Which would make him not just a simple Falcao replacement, but perhaps someone who we think might actually amount to something in Europe.  It could also be that the final arrangements would depend on whether or not we can cut Falcao's loan short in January.

Either way, here's another rumor to add to the Calleri side of the scale.  Will it reach critical mass and become reality?  We shall have to see.