Chelsea, Barcelona still negotiating over transfer fee for César Azpilicueta — reports

Chelsea captain César Azpilicueta is currently with the team in Los Angeles for the first leg of our USA Tour this summer, but whether he’ll actually play for Chelsea this season or move to Barcelona remains to be seen.

Reports earlier this week made it sound like that the move was pretty much done, especially after Chelsea interim sporting director Todd Boehly decided to pay them an in-person visit, but it would appear that the two teams remain locked in negotiations. And while those earlier reports also claimed that Chelsea were willing to deal at €3m, it now looks like we want €8m (£7m) — still not a significant sum but a sum significantly higher than the previous sum. (The idea that Chelsea set that price to “recoup” Azpi’s original transfer fee from ten years ago is laughable though, with that expenditure long-amortized into practically zero.)

Either way, Barcelona are of course not happy with that number and want to lower it, with the latest reports expecting them to succeed in doing so. Then again, with sums so small either way, it’s a question of principle more so than finances, so we’ll see who triumphs in a battle of wills (and possibly other peripheral considerations).