Mois\u00e9s Caicedo has laid out the sequence that led him to Chelsea, confirming he came close to joining Arsenal before deciding to wait for the Blues. Asked about a potential move to north London, Caicedo told the Daily Mail, “I almost did it,” and added, “but now I\u2019m here and I\u2019m so happy. The timing was good.”<\/p>\n
The midfielder\u2019s arrival came after Arsenal redirected their transfer plans and completed the signing of Declan Rice for \u00a3105 million. Caicedo ultimately moved to Chelsea in the same window for a fee worth up to \u00a3115 million despite strong interest from Liverpool.<\/p>\n
Reports in the summer suggested Liverpool had a \u00a3115 million bid accepted by Brighton only for the player to turn it down. Caicedo was candid about his decision: “I waited until Chelsea came for me,” he said. “People laughed. They said I chose the wrong place, but sometimes you need time to adapt to a big team. I needed that.” He also made clear his commitment to his new club: “I want to give everything to this club because they didn\u2019t doubt me. I chose Chelsea because they have ambitions. I want to win trophies\u2014more trophies with this club.”<\/p>\n
Former Liverpool manager J\u00fcrgen Klopp has said Liverpool were “lucky” to not sign Caicedo in 2023, a view that underlines how sought after the midfielder has been. Still, Caicedo downplayed lofty comparisons and praise from others. When the suggestion that he is the best midfielder in the world was raised, he responded, “So many.” He continued, “I don\u2019t want to say to the world that I\u2019m the best because there\u2019s no truth to that. In my mind, I\u2019m the best version of myself, if you know what I mean? It\u2019s different when you say you are the best in the world to the world.”<\/p>\n
On the eve of Chelsea\u2019s meeting with Arsenal, Caicedo praised Declan Rice and welcomed the challenge. “Declan, everybody knows how good he is,” he said. “It will be a great battle, me and him. It\u2019s very nice, very special and like he said, we play in different positions.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Caicedo explains why he chose Chelsea over Arsenal and Liverpool while addressing expectations ahead<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4778,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,1163],"tags":[1081,1140],"class_list":["post-4779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-transfers","tag-adaptation","tag-caicedo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4779","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=4779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}