Chelsea have secured the signing of 19-year-old Dutch defender Jorrel Hato from Ajax, committing the young talent to a seven-year contract stretching until 2032. The transfer fee is reported to be \u20ac44.18 million (\u00a338.5 million).<\/p>\n
Hato, who has risen impressively through Ajax’s ranks, is known as one of their youngest ever debutants, making his first-team appearance at a notably early age and even captaining the club at 17. Over the past two Eredivisie seasons, he has consistently made over 30 appearances and earned the Talent of the Year award last season. He also boasts six appearances for the Netherlands national team.<\/p>\n
The new Chelsea signing primarily plays as a left back but has demonstrated versatility including roles as a centre back. He featured 46 times last season as Ajax ended their league campaign second to PSV Eindhoven and reached the round of 16 in the UEFA Europa League before being eliminated by Eintracht Frankfurt.<\/p>\n
His arrival adds to other noteworthy signings this summer such as Jo\u00e3o Pedro, Jamie Gittens, and Liam Delap, as head coach Enzo Maresca reshapes the squad in his second year. Chelsea’s expenditure in the transfer window has now exceeded \u20ac280 million (\u00a3244 million), surpassing last year’s significant outlay with time still left before the window closes.<\/p>\n
Despite interest from multiple clubs, including Arsenal, Hato expressed confidence in his move, stating: \u201cFor sure it was a big decision. I played seven years at Ajax and for me it was home\u2014the people, the players, the coaches, the culture. So it was not easy to leave, but my feeling was that at this moment I needed to make a step to the biggest club in the biggest competitions, and for me this was the right decision at the right time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hato is set to join his new teammates, including those who lifted the FIFA Club World Cup, as he prepares to integrate into Chelsea\u2019s squad looking to build on recent successes including UEFA Conference League and Club World Cup triumphs as well as a top-four Premier League finish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chelsea completes signing of promising Ajax defender Jorrel Hato in a major summer deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1109,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[188,182],"class_list":["post-1108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","tag-jorrel-hato","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1110,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108\/revisions\/1110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}