Chelsea’s initial attempt to sign Ajax defender Jorrel Hato has been unsuccessful after the Dutch club rejected their opening offer. Reports from the Netherlands reveal that while Chelsea have agreed personal terms with the player, who has expressed his wish to join Stamford Bridge, the negotiations with Ajax remain complex.<\/p>\n
ESPN reports the Dutch side formally declined Chelsea’s first bid and responded with a counter-offer. Though exact figures have not been disclosed, sources suggest Ajax values Hato at around \u20ac60 million (\u00a352.2 million), while Chelsea\u2019s offer was reportedly closer to \u20ac40 million (\u00a334.8 million).<\/p>\n
Some Chelsea supporters noted Hato’s absence from Ajax\u2019s squad in their recent 5\u20131 pre-season win over Celtic, but manager John Heitinga explained his omission was part of resting players who had rejoined training late. \u201cHe\u2019s still an Ajax player,\u201d Heitinga said after the match, adding uncertainty about Hato’s presence in Ajax’s upcoming friendly against Monaco. \u201cI can\u2019t promise anything. We still have to train, and it\u2019s still a few days.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adding Hato would help Chelsea address squad imbalances, particularly in defence. The club currently has nine senior centre backs, but only Ben Chilwell serves as a natural backup to Marc Cucurella at left back. Chilwell spent the latter half of the 2024\u201325 season on loan at Crystal Palace after being sidelined by Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chelsea\u2019s initial offer for defender Jorrel Hato was rejected by Ajax, who have made a counter proposal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[59,188,246],"class_list":["post-567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","tag-featured","tag-jorrel-hato","tag-xavi-simons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567","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=567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}