Chelsea football club recently sold their outcast striker Diego Costa to Atletico Madrid for a fee of £57.5 million. While many would think that the price is fair enough for a striker of Costa’s class and calibre. But given a number of problems that Chelsea had to face with the Spaniard, everyone would say that the London outfit got a superb deal.
Costa had practically disconnected himself from Chelsea after Antonio Conte had told him to find a new club. And ever since that day the 28-year-old wanted to move back to his old club – Atletico Madrid. But it was much easier said than done given the transfer embargo on Diego Simeone’s side. Atleti were also eager to sign up the player but that proved virtually impossible owing to the ban.
Then finally both the clubs agreed on a whopping £57.5 million deal and every Chelsea fan were virtually rolling their eyes over the transfer fee. Now as per a report in The Times, Chelsea look to have secured such a high amount simply cause they agreed to the conditions that the Spanish outfit had put on the table.
Atletico were unable to sign up the player cause they feared that it would breach the Financial Fair Play regulations. Hence they came up with an unorthodox payment structure. The club agreed to take Diego Costa on loan from Chelsea for the remainder of the season – for a fee of £5 million. This means that Chelsea will get the first instalment of the transfer fee only when Atletico Madrid can officially register the player in July of 2018.
The problems for Atletico Madrid, unfortunately, do not stop there as they will have to sell a few players in order to finance the Diego Costa transfer. And the La Liga club will do so by probably selling off Antonine Griezmann – this January or maybe next summer. Griezmann is scheduled to join Manchester United but Chelsea are reportedly also planning a bid for the player.
While Man Utd are the out and out favourites for landing the Frenchman but Chelsea also have a sniff of a chance because they can try and reduce the Diego Costa fee in order to bait Atletico in selling them Antoine Griezmann.
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