It’s more than likely you’ve heard the name Karim Adeyemi recently, but what you might now know is he could have signed for Chelsea when he was 16.
The highly-rated youngster has been tearing it up in Austria with Salzburg and is now wanted by half of Europe, with all the big clubs seemingly keeping an eye on him.
He’s likely to secure a big move next summer, if not sooner, but things could have been very different when Chelsea came calling when he was younger.
It’s something the player has spoken about before, even explaining why he turned down the Blues, and Sport 1 provide background on their efforts today.
They explain that Chelsea ‘made an effort’ to sign Adeyemi, and he even flew to London to train with the Blues.
The youngster made a ‘strong impression’ at the club, but they were unable to secure his signature, and he ended up elsewhere.
What’s interesting is who was behind their interest in him. Sport 1 explain that there were two names key to the courtship, Florian Zahn and Vito Leccese.
The former spent four and a half years with Chelsea as a scout and coordinator before moving to Bayern in January 2020.
The latter served as the Lead Youth Scout in Europe at Stamford Bridge and, like Zahn, is ‘very well connected’. He was the one who was in ‘direct contact’ with Adeyemi and his entourage and pushed for the move.
The interesting thing is, he’s also now at Bayern after following Zahn to the German giants and the two work ‘hand in hand’ at the club. So much so that they’re now interested in Adeyemi again.
And that gives Bayern something of a trump card in negotiations, given the pair know the youngster from their time at Chelsea and can use that relationship to their advantage.
Of course, there’ll be more factors to it than that, but the next time you hear Chelsea could have signed Adeyemi, you know what happened, who the key players were and why he’s probably more likely to end up at Bayern as a result.
