Sergio Ag\u00fcero has laid out how close he came to joining Chelsea on two separate occasions, first in 2010 and again in 2017. The revelations underline how narrowly transfer plans can change the course of clubs and players.<\/p>\n
Ag\u00fcero says Chelsea first showed interest in January 2010 after facing Atl\u00e9tico Madrid in the Champions League. \u201cAfter that game, maybe two months after, my agent said to me, \u2018Chelsea are interested,\u2019\u201d Ag\u00fcero revealed. He added that he discussed the possibility with Frank Lampard, who \u201ctold the staff at Chelsea to sign Ag\u00fcero.\u201d<\/p>\n
That initial interest progressed to a formal approach in 2010, with Chelsea submitting a bid of \u00a330 million. The Athletic reported the offer fell short by \u00a38 million of the fee Manchester City would pay a year later. The same report noted owner Roman Abramovich was irritated by the demands from Ag\u00fcero\u2019s agent.<\/p>\n
Ag\u00fcero also described a second, later episode. He said a move to Chelsea in 2017 was on the brink of completion before it was halted. \u201cI was on the verge of going to Chelsea , then Manchester City cancelled the deal in the last minute,\u201d Ag\u00fcero told La Agusneta . \u201cIt was Conte. Diego Costa was leaving.\u201d Antonio Conte had discarded Diego Costa at the end of that season with a blunt text message, and Ag\u00fcero says he was initially lined up as Costa\u2019s replacement.<\/p>\n
Instead, Ag\u00fcero joined Manchester City in 2011 and remained there for 10 years. He would score the final 82 of his club record 260 goals for City in the four years that followed. Chelsea turned to \u00c1lvaro Morata after Costa\u2019s departure in 2017, a deal that the club found difficult.<\/p>\n
Those two near-misses illuminate the fine margins of transfer business and how a single cancelled negotiation can reshape careers and club plans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ag\u00fcero: near-misses with Chelsea in 2010 and a cancelled 2017 move that could have reshaped careers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6553,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,1163],"tags":[983,1450],"class_list":["post-6554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-transfers","tag-agents","tag-sergio-aguero"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6554","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=6554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}