Chelsea skewed the market for keeper fees, Juan Musso’s agent edition

Chelsea paid £72 million for Kepa Arrizabalaga, which means other goalkeepers’ agents are throwing that number around as a hopeful reference for their clients.

If you’ve been following Juan Musso’s progress and performances this season, you can just go ahead and click away now. We’re not going to tell you anything you don’t already know. Excellent, you’re all still here.

For those of you who didn’t make the transition from watching Napoli a few seasons ago to watching Udinese the last two seasons, Musso has 16 clean sheets in 55 Serie A games. That apparently is enough to have him under consideration from Inter Milan, and something in there has him a late, distant entrant to the rumour mill for who could replace or challenge Kepa Arrizabalaga at Chelsea.

The extent of any interest between Musso and Chelsea could be the Blues’ recent habit of overpaying for young goalkeepers who have never been tested outside of a very limited, relatively low pressure situation. That seems to be his agent’s biggest source of interest. Vicente Montes said:

"If Kepa cost Chelsea €80m, Courtois more or less the same amount and Donnarumma is worth €100m, how much is Juan Musso worth? – Inside Futbol"

Mr. Montes must be new at this game. Normally, if you want to juice your client’s profile and transfer fee in the press you don’t compare him to two players whose transfer fees were £40 million apart.

Chelsea sold Thibaut Courtois for about £32 million to Real Madrid. Certainly that is less than what the Blues paid for Arrizabalaga, but it may not have the effect on his client’s valuation that Montes was hoping for. After the club’s experience with Arrizabalaga, they and any other interested club may be more inclined to set Musso’s value closer to Courtois’ than Arrizabalaga’s.

On the other hand, it’s a bit refreshing to see an agent make such a junior mistake. Simply the fact that he’s not Mino Raiola makes Musso worth at least a closer look.

If Chelsea are considering someone like Musso, someone who could challenge rather than displace Arrizabalaga on day one, they should only be paying the bottom end of the Courtois-to-Arrizabalaga range, if that.

But they don’t need to hit the transfer market to find such a player when they have Jamal Blackman and Jamie Cumming already in the system. If the Blues think Arrizabalaga is not their No. 1, then they need to spend another £70 million on a player with a more established record than Arrizabalaga. They cannot make another speculative purchase for their top keeper: either stay with who they have, or take whatever financial loss is necessary to get the football decisions right.

More than anything, the takeaway from this puffery is that Chelsea set the new baseline for the goalkeeper transfer market. If they had paid £72 million for a player that everyone agreed was worth that much and who then delivered performances appropriate to that value, agents would not casually bandy that figure around as a going-in position for their clients. But now that Arrizabalaga is a £72 million goalkeeper, every agent thinks he has one or two on his client list.

Just wait until Mr. Montes starts shopping around Italy’s next great regista.