After Jose Mourinho admitted that Chelsea midfielder Kevin De Bruyne is set for a departure Wolfsburg director Klaus Allofs believe that they are on the verge of agreeing a deal for the Belgian.
The Chelsea manager was quoted in the Metro:
“He has a chance to go. The club bought him a few years ago for a small fee and now we have the possibility to sell him for a positive amount.”
Whilst Allofs claims that the parties are not far from agreeing terms, he told the Wolfsburger Nachrichten newspaper.:
“It’s not that we can confirm the deal just yet, but we are no longer so far apart with Chelsea that we can’t bridge the differences.”
A few reports are suggesting that the Belgian will go for around £18 million, which probably represents decent business for both clubs as Wolfsburg will be gaining a talent and Chelsea will be making a profit on the £7m they bought him for from Genk in 2012.
It is a pity that things did not quite work out as we all hoped in relation to De Bruyne’s time at Stamford Bridge and although there isn’t much room for him when competing against the likes of Eden Hazard, Oscar, Willian, Juan Mata and Andre Schurrle, if he had more time to work with the manager and the squad then I believe he could have been a top quality player for the club.
But the 22-year-old has a World Cup to think about this summer as well as his long-term career. It is unlikely his place in the Belgium squad is under threat whilst being out-of-favour at Chelsea but he would need to be playing regular football in order to maintain his place in their starting XI as well as going into the tournament with enough match time to effectively make an impact.
Should he move to Wolfsburg he will be joining an outfit that are (at the time of writing) 14 points behind league leaders Bayern Munich but only two points away from Dortmund, who are being dismantled by their rivals and it will be interesting to see if they’ll manage to finish inside the Champions League place by the end of the season. Wolfsburg are also backed by Volkswagen and have the biggest spending power in Germany aside from Pep’s Bayern.
