Empoli leading race to sign Ethan Ampadu on loan from Chelsea — report

Ethan Ampadu spent last season on loan at Venezia in Serie A, and while his team ended up rock bottom and thus relegated, his performances were noticed by other teams in the league, who did not.

Spezia are one of those, as we learned last week, and now they’ve been joined by a “keen” Empoli as well. Both of them finished in the bottom half of the table, but well clear of the drop. Newly promoted Cremonese have also been credited with interest.

But it’s Empoli are said to be leading the race, as per reports out of Italy, though Chelsea are apparently not willing to let Ampadu go until we secure the addition of a new center back — which is a strange claim seeing as how we didn’t even bother assigning a squad number to the 21-year-old, but did give one to Malang Sarr, who’s much closer to securing a loan move away.

Ampadu has two years left on his contract but hasn’t featured in a competitive match for us in three years.