Donny van de Beek denies hearing any Chelsea rumors after being told of Chelsea rumors

Ajax Amsterdam’s young and exciting team is slowly starting to be dismantled, as it tends to always be the case with young and exciting Ajax teams. Frenkie de Jong and Matthijs de Ligt commanded €75m fees each this summer, and the likes of Donny van de Beek, David Neres, and the slighly older Hakim Ziyech are sure to follow in the next few years as well.

All three of those players have taken a turn in the Chelsea rumor mill in the past year, with Van de Beek leading the charge in that respect most recently. Unfortunately, the 22-year-old midfielder has not heard of any Chelsea interest. Of course, he was just told of Chelsea’s interest in order to deny it.

As in the case of the Wilfried Zaha rumor, Chelsea’s interest is mired in speculation, which is only to be expected as we can’t sign any new players until 2020 thanks to FIFA’s transfer ban. That may have caused us to miss out on some juicy targets — Tanguy Ndombele, now at Spurs, and Nicolas Pépé, soon at Arsenal, come to mind — but the good thing about the transfer market is that every summer brings a new batch of unmissable talent to compete for and fawn over. Van de Beek will be one of those next year, and after a year on the sidelines, Chelsea will possibly be looking to make a splash.