After days of the Catalan press talking up Luis Enrique moving to Chelsea and making it sound like something which could happen imminently, Sport now say it won’t.
Not until the summer, anyway.
Enrique himself is said to be against a move to Stamford Bridge at this stage of the season and wants to keep to his plan of a year off, just like Pep Guardiola did.
The Catalan newspaper say an offer from Chelsea has been ‘on the table for some weeks’, and moving to the Premier League club is his ‘most likely option’ in the summer, it’s what is expected to happen.
But Sport also say Enrique has received approaches from ‘more interesting’ teams in Europe, but even knocked them back because he’s determined not to take a job up until the summer.
That could just be for Enrique PR purposes, but Sport also say the former Barcelona boss doesn’t want the Chelsea squad as it is, because it isn’t his, which suggests there’d have to be big changes in the summer.
On Antonio Conte, Sport say the only reason he’s still in a job is because Chelsea don’t want to pay him the €30m compensation he’d be due if they sack him.
That figure seems high. Conte signed a new Chelsea deal in the summer, and whilst it had been expected he’d extend it until 2021, the finish date remained June 2019.
Given Conte doesn’t get paid €30m a season, it’s difficult to see how Sport have come to that figure, unless they’re calculating a further three seasons, and the remainder of this one.
