Matt Miazga delivered an impressive season on loan at Belgian side Anderlecht, but reportedly will not be a part of the club’s future going forward.
Anderlecht has ended its talks with Chelsea over the U.S. Men’s National Team defender, Belgian outlet Voetbal Nieuws reported Monday. Miazga expressed his interest in staying at Anderlecht long term earlier this season, but now have to prepare for a new destination in the coming months.
“Right now I am under contract with Chelsea, but it doesn’t mean that I will still be there in the future,” Miazga told SBI back in April. “I have enjoyed the time here and it’s been a while since I was in the plans back in England, so plenty could happen.”
The 25-year-old centerback has been loaned out five times by Chelsea since his arrival there from New York Red Bulls in 2016. Miazga was a regular contributor for Vincent Kompany’s side during the 2020/2021 season, playing in 33 matches and scoring one goal.
Miazga’s contract at Chelsea is set to expire in June 2022 and he doesn’t seem to be in the future plans of manager Thomas Tuchel. It is undecided where Miazga will end up this fall with Anderlecht falling out of the situation.
TIV is right. This isn’t about the cost of one jewel in the trunk, it’s about the value of the whole trunk. This has been Chelsea’s strategy for years. This is the ongoing joke about the “Loan Army”. CFC has 2-3 teams of players who could step into the first team as emergency players BUT don’t rate them high enough to be regular squad contributors.
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Asset Scenario:
Miazga was purchased at around 5 million + he’s been paid 1 million for the last 5 years and presumably + 1 million more for the 2021 season. That’s a total outlay of 11 million dollars. That is chump change for CFC!
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If the loan fees paid out by other teams is at 2 million a season + they allow a lowball 6-7 million transfer in January … they’re gonna take in 16-17 million on an asset/player that cost them about 11 million.
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That’s a good bit of change when this is all said and done. Especially since they player didn’t develop a market for which they could sales him outright for twice what they paid for him.
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This is why the CFC loan army works. The rich get richer. Small clubs can’t do this. No global scouting. No prestige to attract the asset. No cash on hand to buy or “gamble” on undeveloped assets.
At this point it’s pretty clear he’s a notch below what you need to be, to make it at Chelsea. To make it at Chelsea you have to be a Pulisic, a world-class player, a guy who can line up for an international side and start, and that’s not Miazga. He’s a guy who’s increasingly getting passed even with the Nats, a B or even C teamer with us now…you can see why Chelsea’s moved on from him. He’s a good player, but not a Champions League-level player, and I think at age 25 what you see is what you’re going to get from him at this point.
The man is probably on honeymoon right about now. I doubt he’s concerned about his club at the moment. A job is a job, but marriage is for life!
This doesn’t makes sense to me unless it is for one of the following reasons –1.They really see a future for Miazga with Chelsea, 2. This is a negotiating ploy to get more money from Anderlicht, or 3. They are pretty sure there is another club willing to pay more than Anderlict will.
people have such a naive sense of how this all works. look up kenneth omeruo. he was on loan from CFC from 2012-19 never playing a league game for the parent. he only left when finally bought by his 6th loan club. CFC makes money off annual loan fees which they lose if the player is let go on a cheap transfer. some teams might do the courtesy and trim profit. chelsea does not.
i see him facing a basic problem here. the very “Chelsea” tag and any success you have on loan likely drives your price up beyond what smaller clubs can afford. dike’s situation underlines where anything but massive club success leaves you an expensive transfer for a budget team. with other players the very amount of NT involvement necessary for a work permit makes one an expensive player for transfer.
this is one reason i advocate players being measured in their ambitions is if you aren’t playing for the big club you sign with and they start loaning you that can be 1/3 of your career on a neverending loan loop where CFC wants more than the cheap club taking players on loan wants to play — or they would have bought them in the first place. so i suggest modulating a little downward on ambition and taking a job where they assure you they see you as a first team player. unless you are pulisic or reyna — which most of the team is not.
Well, you called me naive. So, wise one, why is the report saying that they aren’t interested in selling him to Anderlicht but don’t want him for Chelsea? If they aren’t interested in keeping him, but aren’t interested in selling him to an interested club, are you saying they’ll just loan him out until his contract expires and hope they can sell him when he’s older and Anderlict may have gotten someone else? Or just loan him for another year and get nothing when he walks away?
i never answered gary — the order of posts misleads. the easy response to, CFC doesn’t want him but anderlecht won’t pay is for the jillionth time they loan him to the next sucker. that is the easy 3rd option. as i said, these teams make decent money on the loan fees, and they play a waiting game. CFC in particular is willing to wait most of a decade while collecting years of loan fees that become the equivalent, over aggregate time, of a small transfer themselves. to me the players are complicit to some degree as they seem to naively believe they will come in and see the field for City or Spurs or Chelsea when objectively that was hubris. the answer is be smarter about your destination and maybe sign to anderlecht directly — not as prestigious but they want you for you and not as an asset. the answer is let your contract expire if you are stuck in the loop.
this is anathema to the people making UCL counts. but, ethan horvath, is my response. took him 3 years to get back into the team because people assume bench club players (or loan warriors) suck.
it is interesting to me that until his injury aaron long from RBNY had basically stepped into Miazga’s national team trajectory when he stepped into his club shoes. even mckenzie at his smaller belgian club passed him by.
IMO one of the biggest factors in progression of my select teammates when we hit college was college minutes. an elite few starting at soccer schools took off. among the rest of us, in terms of who else accelerated, it seemed to matter more whether you played and less where it was happening.
You didn’t really answer Gary’s question why would they loan him out another year and then let him walk as a free transfer next summer when his contract ends if Anderlecht was wanting to buy?
the answer re why would they not sell miazga for a transfer fee > loan fee with one year left on their deal? well, chelsea has basically a whole second team worth of players for sale or on loan. they could take the view that loaning him through expiration maintains leverage and price for the other players they hope are as or more valuable. snobs always want to make this about individual merit value. sometimes it’s “if i sell x at $y then they will start lowballing me for the pile of other players,” so you do a narrowly irrational thing to try and keep the player values of your asset stockpile higher. look at FCD and BM. is “Che” really worth all that or is FCD trying to set a precedent for what their general body of young talent is now worth? which BM then resists because if they pay it once the price goes up for everyone.
GP – Why do you think that it was Chelsea that walked away from the table? The article says Anderlecht ended talks, and says nothing about Chelsea not wanting to sell to Anderlecht.
As in most cases, this all may have to do with the two teams’ valuations of Miazga; maybe Chelsea put an unrealistically high number on Miazga and that forced Anderlecht to walk away.
Miazga’s been on loan 5 times with 5 teams and none of them have pursued a transfer. I don’t know if there’s much of a market for him in Europe. But unless they sell him now, Chelsea may be faced with keeping a player who never sees the field (or even makes the 18) for them but who earns over $1 million, or another loan where they won’t have to pay his salary. In either scenario, they lose him for free in a year. So I don’t think that Chelsea would be greedy with Miazga now; they don’t have a lot of leverage.
Or maybe you’re right that there’s another team out there that Chelsea has been speaking with that will pay more than Anderlecht for Miazga. Maybe a Championship team or a lower level Premier team.