With only two years left on his contract and an indisposition to extend it at this point in times, it was believed that the best player to call it soccer rather than football, Christian Pulisic would be available this summer at a starting price of “only” €70 million. With practically all of Europe watching, a bidding war was expected.
No such war, or even battle materialized, and so Pulisic looks set for another season at Signal Iduna Park. In fact, according to a report from the Daily Mail, BVB are insisting that he’s actually not for sale. If he was on the transfer list, he’s now off of it.
DAILYMAIL
— Chelsea FC RSS Feeds (@CFCrss) August 4, 2018
Borussia Dortmund insist £60m-rated teenager Christian Pulisic is not for sale
https://t.co/vrVpoZAJCN
While Dortmund are resigned to eventually losing Pulisic just as Pulisic himself knows that eventually he will get his big-money move (probably) to the Premier League, that won’t be happening this summer.
The German transfer window is open through the end of the month, unlike the one in the Premier League that ends on Thursday, but even so, BVB apparently aren’t too keen on scrambling to find a replacement — there aren’t too many 19-year-olds able to play week in and week out at that level, for a start. Dortmund have also already jettisoned Andriy Yarmolenko and André Schürrle this summer, which will likely mean an even more important role for the USA international.
Chelsea and any other suitors could potentially try and make an arrangement similar to the one Liverpool made for Naby Keïta, and agree a transfer for the following summer for a set fee and maybe a performance-based variable. In Keïta’s case, Liverpool agreed to pay the £48 million release clause plus a premium (set at £14 million after RB Leipzig qualified for the Europa League) for a transfer 12 months in the future.
Would Chelsea look to do the same thing, paying over the odds to secure a valuable asset, and thus avoid a transfer clash? Our hearts want to believe we would, but our methods that made us lose out on several transfer targets over the last few years make it clear that we would not.
Unfortunately.