Market closed for Aubameyang; Chelsea are too late

Chelsea’s unlikely acquisition of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is all but buried with the report from kicker that the market has closed on the Borussia Dortmund striker.

"We see the transfer window as closed, the time has decided."

-Michael Zorc, BVB sporting director; source: kicker

Dortmund met with AC Milan on Tuesday to not only play a friendly (in which Aubameyang scored twice to stake BVB to a 3-1 win) but to discuss a potential transfer, but it resulted in no movement. Dortmund had set an internal deadline for the transfer window and have no plans to sell Aubameyang outside of it. A couple days ago their Chief Executive Hans-Joachim Watzke said that they would “wait a few more days, but we will not wait a long time” for the Aubameyang transfer talks to continue. Apparently he was very serious when he said a few days, because Aubameyang looks set to stay Dortmund for the foreseeable future. His contract doesn’t expire till 2020.

The news isn’t that surprising from the Chelsea point of view. Dortmund wanted at least €70m to make them consider selling Aubameyang. Chelsea haven’t seemed willing to pay anywhere near that amount for attackers, by all indications never submitted an actual bid, and don’t look to budge on that stance moving forward.

This news isn’t incredibly surprising from a Dortmund point of view either. If they were going to sell Aubameyang it likely would have only been to Bayern Munich. Because why would they want to sell their world class striker, like so many of their other players before, to anyone but their biggest rival?

In all seriousness the report puts the nail in the coffin for Chelsea’s hope of an Aubameyang purchase. That’s a disappointing development considering discussions with Morata haven't proceeded very far at all, and Lukaku went to Manchester United. Chelsea look likely to be without a first-team striker other than Michy Batshuayi come August.