Sevilla ‘give up’ Morata pursuit but Atletico reportedly still interested

Sevilla director Joaquin Caparros has confirmed that they have pulled out of the race for Alvaro Morata as the financial commitment would’ve been way too high. Instead, they opted to sign Munir El Haddadi from Barcelona for €1,050,000.

“Sevilla are an appealing team for a lot of players and Morata wanted to come. We had talks but when we started talking about fees, we quickly realized that it was impossible and we gave up. We focused on those who have come, with whom we are very happy. Munir was wanted by a lot of other teams but he wanted to come with us.”

-Joaquin Caparros; Source: Evening Standard

According to the Evening Standard, Sevilla were willing to go as high as a £5m loan fee with a £35m option to buy at the end of the season, but that was rejected by Chelsea. Apparently we’re not ready to take that big of a loss on our record non-goalkeeper signing, even if he’s barely featured in the team recently.

Unfortunately for us, not a lot of clubs can afford fees much higher than the £35-40m, either in Spain or Italy. One possibility remains Atletico Madrid, who are reportedly ready to “hold transfer talks” for the 26-year-old. Goal say that Atletico are ready to offer a loan fee of €3 million for 6 months and pay 50% of Morata’s wages ... but that right now Chelsea are looking for a deal where the loaning club pays 100% of Morata’s €175k weekly salary.

Meanwhile, with all this is going on, Morata, who announced on his Instagram story that he was heading to Gatwick on Monday morning, was later pictured in Spain with his wife and his agent. Considering Sevilla had pulled out of the race, what was he doing there? Who knows.

So, where does this leave us? Nowhere good. Chelsea still have a striker who wants out and is under-performing, we still don’t have a deal in place for that to happen and we’re still not any closer to buying a replacement as the Higuain deal is also quite complicated at this stage. What a mess...