Charly Musonda to wear Eden Hazard's old shirt number at Chelsea next season

Carrying the tag of ‘wonderkid’ can be a large, even stifling burden for young players, and certainly the hype around Charly Musonda Jr hasn’t always been helpful. But the kid’s talent is undeniable, as is his need to have a good season after the failed loan and injuries of last year. While many would expect that to entail another loan try at some top level team, it would appear that at least for now, Charly Jr is staying with the Chelsea first-team. As per @chelsayouth, he’s even been assigned a fairly meaninful first-team squad number.

Musonda was recently linked with a laughably low £5m move to Celtic, but that’s been denied by multiple sources, including one of his older brothers. The understanding for most of the summer has been that Charly will get his shot under Conte this pre-season, and this squad number assignment lends plenty of weight to that. The no.17 shirt of course belonged to fellow Belgian Eden Hazard when he first came to Chelsea before getting picked up by Pedro in 2015. It stood empty last season after Pedro switched to his more preferred no.11.