Chelsea just one of many clubs interested in Ajax’s David Neres — report

Chelsea are supposedly interested in 22-year-old Ajax Amsterdam winger David Neres, who has been lighting up the scoring charts both in the Eredivisie and in Europe, including goals against both Real Madrid and Juventus in the last two knockout round of the Champions League.

That latter goal, coming just the other day against Juventus was indeed the sort of individual effort to get all of Europe to notice.

Unsurprisingly, a number of teams are interested in the €40m-man, including Arsenal, Everton, Manchester United, and Chelsea just in England. That’s according to the Telegraph who add that both Arsenal and Everton have had initial contacts but Chelsea are still just in the monitoring phase, as we so often are.

And even that measure of interest comes with a number of qualifiers even though Eden Hazard, who is surely set to leave, as well as Hudson-Odoi, Pedro and Willian are all entering the last year of their contracts — namely the transfer ban that might prevent any and all new signings. While the latest update from the appeals process paints a positive picture, it’s far from guaranteed that Chelsea will be able to delay the ban until the winter.

David Neres primarily plays on the right, but is quite capable on the left as well (as evidenced by the aforementioned goal, if nothing else). While no one can possibly replace Eden Hazard straight up at the moment, a combination of Christian Pulisic, Callum Hudson-Odoi, and perhaps someone like David Neres could do the trick for now — and they would only get better from there with age and experience.