Barcelona officials travel to London to complete formalities for Chelsea defender

Barcelona’s special attention towards players nearing the end of their contracts narrowed their search to Chelsea’s Andreas Christensen. And to bring this deal to fruition, director of football Mateu Alemany along with assistant sporting director Jordi Cruyff recently travelled to London to seal the deal.

According to Mundo Deportivo, the Denmark international is ready to commit his future to Barcelona, and everything regarding the deal is where it is supposed to be. As of today, it’s only a matter of putting pen to paper and an official announcement. 

It’s not that Christensen, whose current deal expires at the end of the season, was not offered a renewal by Chelsea.

Until last year, everyone in Chelsea’s camp seemed optimistic about the extension, but the conversation that was led by his father, Sten, who was his agent back then, stalled the progress. The reasons were the commission demanded by Christensen Sr. that was believed to be way out of line.

In December 2021, the defender changed his representation to KIN Partners, who kept Sten as an advisor. The negotiations began once again but to no avail as Chelsea refused to meet the defender’s demands.

On came Barcelona and Bayern Munich in the fray, giving Christensen leverage to demand even a better salary.

By that time, the defender had made up his mind of leaving the Stamford Bridge team and was only looking for a project outside of the Premier League. 

Now, Barcelona didn’t lure the Dane with excessive capital. Rather, it was Xavi’s convincing that got the job done. The 42-year-old knows Christensen is one for the future, and after having a considerable experience of playing in England, he wouldn’t really struggle at Barça.

Barcelona went with a plan; a plan of captivating through the enthralling project that Xavi is building. As mentioned by MD, the proposition worked wonders, with the player agreeing to ‘charge less money than in other clubs’. And once all that was done, Alemany and Cruyff planned their trip to London.