Barcelona identified Jo\u00e3o Pedro as one option to succeed Robert Lewandowski, but Chelsea have made clear they do not intend to make his departure easy. The Brazil international was linked to the Spanish champions after a stay in England by Barcelona sporting director Deco, although that visit produced no obvious breakthrough.<\/p>\n
Fabrizio Romano reports Chelsea\u2019s stance remains firm: The Blues “want to keep” Pedro. The club views the 24-year-old as an “important part of the project” and “have every intention” of keeping him in a blue shirt. Even if Barcelona persists, sources say it would be “difficult” for the Spanish side to secure his signature.<\/p>\n
The move to Barcelona holds obvious appeal. The Catalans have collected five trophies in the last two years, including back-to-back La Liga titles, and Hansi Flick\u2019s side features emerging talents such as teenage sensation Lamine Yamal. With Lewandowski gone, a regular starting role would be available.<\/p>\n
That contrasts sharply with Stamford Bridge this season. Chelsea finished 10th in the Premier League, failed to qualify for any European competition and installed their third permanent manager in the last year in Xabi Alonso, all amid fan unrest directed at BlueCo. Still, Pedro was a rare bright spot in 2025\u201326: he led the team with 20 goals across all competitions and was named Chelsea Player of the Season.<\/p>\n
Barcelona will now consider alternatives. The simplest path would be to entrust Ferran Torres with the central role; Torres recorded a career-high 21 goals this season and assumed Lewandowski\u2019s starting job for much of the campaign. Yet Torres also experienced spells of anonymity that create doubts about his capacity to lead a front line aimed at winning the Champions League, a tournament Barcelona last claimed in 2015.<\/p>\n
Another target, Atl\u00e9tico Madrid forward Juli\u00e1n Alvarez, remains attractive on sporting grounds but carries a reported price tag upwards of \u20ac110 million ($116.5 million), a sum that stretches a club already constrained by financial limits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chelsea insist they will keep Jo\u00e3o Pedro after Barcelona’s approach; Pedro scored 20 goals (2025\u201326)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14095,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1017,190],"tags":[983,1558],"class_list":["post-14096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barcelona","category-chelsea","tag-agents","tag-brazil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14096","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=14096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}