Chelsea have been loaning out Mario Pasalic for years now, hoping to make a big profit on the €2m they paid for him in the first place.
Finally, the Croatian midfielder has blossomed, on loan in Serie A with Atalante, and according to Football Italia, he is worth “almost €25m”. That would be a healthy profit.
However, the problem is that Chelsea won’t be getting that money. In our wisdom we negotiated a clause into Pasalic’s move to Bergamo which means they can sign him for a flat €15m fee.
So no matter how well he does, or how much money he is sold for, we can only get our €15m. It’s a disastrous bit of business from our end, especially as it was negotiated last summer. As far as we’re aware, we could have bumped that figure up when he returned to them again this season.
Instead, we left it at the unambitious €15m mark, and now we’ll not make the profit we deserve for developing him all these years.
