Chelsea transfer news: Blues made £60m Alvaro Morata offer only for Real Madrid to block move, striker confirms
Antonio Conte signed Michy Batshuayi for £33m instead
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Your support makes all the difference.Real Madrid forward Alvaro Morata has revealed he held talks with Chelsea over the summer after the Blues made an offer which would have made him ‘the most expensive Spanish player ever’.
Chelsea were chasing a striker all summer and Antonio Conte made the Spain forward his number one target.
Morata left Juventus at the start of the transfer window after Madrid exercised their buy-back option to re-sign the striker for £23m.
With the likes of Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United sniffing around Morata, Madrid bought him back with the view of making a quick profit from selling him on again, only for Zinedine Zidane to decide he wanted to keep him.
Like Zidane, Morata saw his future at the Bernabeu and rejected the chance to leave after being given assurances about his role at the club. He did however admit that Chelsea were the closest a team came to tempting him to leave Madrid.
"Chelsea showed the most interest," Morata told German sport newspaper Bild. “Antonio Conte had already signed me for Juventus.
"And it was a very good offer this time. I would have been the most expensive Spanish player ever.
“But they (Real Madrid) said they had me in their plans, and that was always a dream of mine.”
Morata said the offer from was ‘roughly’ £60m, meaning he would have taken Fernando Torres’ record for the most expensive Spanish player ever, when he moved to Chelsea for £50m in 2011.
The Blues instead signed Belgium’s Michy Batshuayi after being similarly frustrated in their attempts to recapture Romelu Lukaku from Everton.
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