Chelsea manager, Antonio Conte, has confirmed that Chelsea had held an interest in Virgil van Dijk before his record breaking £75 million deal to Anfield.
Merseyside giants, Liverpool, announced the marquee transfer of Van Dijk shortly before the start of the January transfer window. The Dutchman has earned a reputation as one of the premier league’s finest ball playing defenders and his acquisition by the reds represents a steal as Chelsea and Manchester City had both been in contention for his signature.
Conte is known to publicly admire the Red’s new acquisition and had earlier warned that City’s rivals could not allow the runaway Premier League leaders to further bolster their squad by signing Van Dijk. Speaking on Friday the former Italy manager admitted that he
would have rather the defender ended up at Stamford Bridge than Anfield.
“This is football, this is life,” Conte said when asked about Chelsea missing out on Van Dijk. “For sure it was our target to sign him, but as you know very well, football is this. You can have a lot of targets but then you must be able to reach them. The transfer market is not simple for any club.”
Chelsea, following their title winning campaign, had endured a frustrating Summer with much publicized failures to land top targets. This had irked Conte and he had been linked with an exit from the Stamford Bridge dugout just like he famously did at Juventus where a similar lack of support in the transfer market had forced him to tender his resignation.
Chelsea announced a £69.2m profit on player trading in their latest annual financial results earlier this month — largely underpinned by the £60m sale of Oscar to Shanghai SIPG in January 2017 — and have been looking to balance signings with departures for several years.
Van Dijk made it clear that Liverpool was his preferred destination last summer, when the Merseyside club were the subject of an official complaint from Southampton for tapping up and temporarily forced to withdraw their interest.
Conte’s disappointment at missing out on the Dutchman will be tempered by the breakthrough form of Andreas Christensen, who has displaced David Luiz in the centre of the Chelsea defence since November and signed a new long-term contract on Tuesday that will keep him at Stamford Bridge until June 2022.
Christensen is expected to keep his place ahead of the fit-again Luiz when Chelsea host Arsenal in the semifinal of the Carabao Cup on Wednesday.