Not a handful of people is aware of the business Chelsea is carrying on. The Blues has tapped into a market few had considered and aren’t just benefiting the rewards from endorsements and TV deals, but also profiting from their loan policy for many years. Their policy is actually a business for them where they buy players at a very low cost and sell them at higher rates.
The standard of player has gone up across the Premier League with more than £1 billion amount spent in this summer transfer. Even clubs like Bournemouth which were heading out of business some years back are purchasing players for £15 million. This success of the Premier League commercially is its strength as its weakness.
The club whose name comes the foremost is Chelsea, one of the biggest clubs in the Premier League football with lots of legacies. Not that some pundits holding a grudge has pointed at Chelsea but a player has come out who has described the Chelsea loan policy as a business to make a profit.
Chelsea’s academy winger, Lucas Piazon has slammed the club for their mistreatment openly and when gone into the depth some astonishing facts have been revealed about the club.
The 26-year old winger joined the Chelsea academy in 2011 from Sao Paolo, a Brazilian club. However, it has been nine years since he is being sent on to various clubs constantly on loan. He has been at a minimum of seven clubs from six various countries since 2013 when Chelsea loaned him.
Neither has the player called dup to the first team nor has he been sold to some other team. He has only featured for Chelsea in three games, the last was in the year 2012.
This has exposed Chelsea’s infamous extensive loan policy of signing young players from all over the world and subsequently sending them on loan to different clubs with no intention of counting them in their own club for the future.
”At first, I felt really good. I went through the under-23s, got to the first team, and, even in the first loans, I felt Chelsea had expectations and interest in me. I believed I could come back and have opportunities at any time.”
”Later, as time passed, I became just another business for them. They send me out on loan with the expectation of selling me and making some money with me. I think that’s more or less what they think,” said Piazon to Portuguese outlet Maisfutebol.
Not only Lucas Piazon but there have been several instances where top players have criticized the football policy. One football figure said once that the business policy will eventually send the players into early retirement if this continues.
The Blues loaned over 35 players to various clubs at a point, none of whom has ever got into the senior team as per Bleacher Reports. John Terry was the only exceptional academy graduate for almost a decade to break through into the first team with his exceptional talent despite all their remarkable exploits in youth leagues.
The number of players Chelsea have out on loan 👀 pic.twitter.com/5iJB6CYiAX
— B/R Football (@brfootball) September 3, 2016
All that somewhat got some break when Chelsea fell under the transfer ban. With the appointment of Frank Lampard as the manager, they were forced to give opportunities to the neglected ones. Some credit has to be given to Lampard as well to make academy graduates like Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham, Reece James, and Fikayo Tomori key members of his team.
Currently, now the youth-team policy has talented young players at loans- the same youngsters who have dominated their age groups at home and abroad for the past few seasons. The truth is, the policy is bulking the players up rather than feeding the senior team.
It seems the club operates separately from the Chelsea academy. The academy is operating as a business corporation to make money rather than producing players to use them as a tool to prevent their spending in the transfer session. With 38 players out on loan this campaign, it has become a brand- a brand that has taken them to an industrial level.
All the players loaned are signed at a young age and send them away immediately. Paul Scholes has spoken about this too, referring to the players as the commodities of the club. The way Chelsea ha invested throughout, they have shown they have a commitment in the players they’re bringing through as representing a number on the balance sheet.
Those 38 players are more than enough numerically to create a new club that could sustain all the season itself without any purchase. Why would a club send out innumerable players out on loan to represent an entire Premier League squad!
It’s all about money. Whether the West London club continues to follow this cruel business model is yet to be seen in the future.
