Chalk another one up to the law of predictable outcomes. Chelsea had to pay their way out of the weak position Maurizio Sarri and Bayern Munich put the club in with Callum Hudson-Odoi, and now other young players want similar contracts.
Callum Hudson-Odoi’s contract saga lasted for nearly as long as his first-team career up to that point. Chelsea had to go into full reactive mode after Bayern Munich saw an opportunity to pluck Hudson-Odoi off of Maurizio Sarri’s bench (if he was ever even that close to the XI) last winter. The club first had to direct Sarri to play Hudson-Odoi, just as a gesture of the club’s faith in the youngster and to mitigate his dissatisfaction. Then they had to haggle for far too long to meet the youngster’s demands for a contract extension, even as he recovered from a serious injury throughout the summer.
With Hudson-Odoi finally signing in early September, other young Blues fell into place. Fikayo Tomori was the most recent Cobham graduate to extend well into his own and this century’s 20’s. But Tammy Abraham and Reece James still have not signed beyond their initial senior contracts, and their long-time teammate Hudson-Odoi is looming over the negotiations.
The Telegraph reports Abraham wants at least the £120,000 a week Callum Hudson-Odoi is making.
While Hudson-Odoi was languishing on the outskirts of Sarri’s 23-and-older squad (are O23’s a thing?), Tammy Abraham and Reece James were excelling in the Championship. Even if Hudson-Odoi had been a regular in the Blues’ squad, or at least earned minutes consummate to his talent, he would not have had as much of an impact as Abraham had at Aston Villa or James had at Wigan. Abraham also has his two previous seasons on loan as proof of performance and potential for his negotiations. By many measures, Abraham and James have a stronger case than Hudson-Odoi for a given wage.
But Chelsea will not have a chance to compare the performances and prospects of these players in a clear, equitable way. The events of last season ended that possibility.
By giving Callum Hudson-Odoi such short shrift, Maurizio Sarri opened the door for Bayern Munich to wield their leverage. They promised money, playing time, a near-guaranteed trophy each season (“near”-guaranteed, as this season is showing) and maybe even a prestige kit number.
Bayern Munich’s offer was as much about opportunism as long-term planning. If Bayern Munich did not think they could pry a dissatisfied Hudson-Odoi away from Chelsea, they would have trained their sights elsewhere. That is, if Callum Hudson-Odoi had not been pushed away from the first team so effectively that he started entertaining the first available offers to leave his boyhood club, Bayern Munich would not have been first to make those offers.
And if Bayern Munich had not made those offers in the middle of a process that started with Maurizio Sarri and ended much too far later with Marina Granovskaia in September, Tammy Abraham and Reece James may already have signed their contracts on terms to which they and the club could easily agree.
This is another example of what we’ve meant since late 2018 about how it will take Chelsea years to rectify all the consequences of Maurizio Sarri’s single season at the club.
With his uncontaminated myopia, Sarri showed no more concern for the repercussions of ignoring 18-year old Callum Hudson-Odoi than he did to doing much the same to 32-year old Gary Cahill.
It doesn’t take a multidimensional chess master to see that if a coach alienates a teenager with a high ceiling and a still-reasonable transfer value, other clubs will make a move for that player. That leaves his club with two options: let him go and look the fool (again) if he becomes the next Kevin de Bruyne, or pay to keep him around. If the club chooses the latter, they will have to pay more than his market value, which has already been elevated by this process. That, in turn, will raise the floor for any other similarly situated players.
Chelsea’s current situation with Tammy Abraham and Reece James is a completely predictable and foreseeable outcome from the events that started last autumn.
It’s the sort of situation that calls out for clubs to have a technical director / director of football. But in the absence of anyone in that position, any coach who cares to see beyond the moment he is living in and considers the broader condition of the club – hopefully he thinks about it as “his” club – should be able to walk a few steps down this elementary chain of logic. But we know now that Sarri always saw Chelsea as a stepping stone, and there is no reason to think he would have cared any more for Abraham and James than he did for Hudson-Odoi. He would have let them all leave without a second thought.
We’ve said for the last year that Callum Hudson-Odoi will end up owing some of his Chelsea career to Bayern Munich. Now Tammy Abraham and Reece James can say the same, and they can even acknowledge Maurizio Sarri’s role in their forthcoming lucre as well.
How perfect. The two youth players who will derive the most straight-forward benefit from Maurizio Sarri’s time at Stamford Bridge were not around while he smoked up the corridors.