Chelsea actually came quite close to signing England star Declan Rice a few years ago.
That is according to Jody Morris.
Declan Rice, who’s been one of the top midfielders in the Premier League for several years, put himself on the map with 245 first-team appearances for West Ham.
Eventually, he sealed his high-profile transfer away from the London Stadium last summer when he joined Arsenal in a mega £105 million deal (BBC).
It’s a testament to how good Rice has slotted in at Arsenal this season that barely anyone is speaking about his price tag.
Morris, who worked as Chelsea’s assistant coach to Frank Lampard between 2019-21, has shared that the Blues were close to convincing Rice to make the move to Stamford Bridge.
Speaking on the No Tippy Tappy Podcast, Morris shared: “I messaged him when we were there and said, would you come back? Because obviously, he was released from Chelsea as a 14-year-old. If you actually spoke to Dec, I don’t think that he would have thought that he should have been released. But there was quite a few of them that thought maybe he shouldn’t have been released.
“It’s probably the best thing for him. He’s gone on to amazing things at West Ham. But while he was there, going into the second season I was on at Lamps all the time going, Dec would be unbelievable for us. We need more legs because [N’Golo] Kante hadn’t played for us a lot. He’d only played about 40 percent of the time, he kept getting injured. And I said, would you like Dec? And Lamps said I don’t know, I haven’t really seen enough of him.
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“About a month later, he was like I’ve been all over Dec since we’ve been having a closer look. I messaged Dec saying would you come back, otherwise there’s no point Lamps going to have the conversations with anybody if Dec is still [not looking to leave]. And he went, no, no, I’m a Chelsea fan, of course I would. So that got put in motion and Lamps started speaking to him. And it was on.
“The upstairs at the club were speaking to his dad and talking about a few things. It was pushed behind a couple of other signings and didn’t get through. I think at the time they were quoting around £60, £65 million, so that would’ve been an absolute snip.”
Declan Rice was close to Chelsea return
It’s certainly frustrating to hear Chelsea narrowly missed out on Rice, especially at an “absolute snip” of £60 million.
However, the defensive midfielder is now an Arsenal player and a thing of the past.
Instead, Chelsea are relying on the talent of Moises Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez to click in their midfield.
Incidentally, in a study published by Football Observatory last month, Blues playmaker was valued as more expensive than Rice.
