The surprise £26.5m Chelsea swoop which puts them in a battle with Barcelonaplaceholder image
The surprise £26.5m Chelsea swoop which puts them in a battle with Barcelona | Getty Images
Chelsea have been unexpectedly linked with a bid for a Crystal Palace star - but is there any truth to the story?
These are rather heady days to be a Crystal Palace fan – when your players aren’t being sold to Bayern Munich and Arsenal, they’re being linked with Real Madrid and Barcelona, as is the case with Adam Wharton and Daniel Muñoz. Selhurst Park has never seen so much talented concentrated in one squad at one time before, and the world’s biggest teams are taking notice – including, it would seem, Chelsea.
Reports suggesting that Barcelona are interested in wing-back Muñoz have been circulating for weeks, but now Chelsea’s name has been thrown into the mix by gossip website Caught Offside. It’s an intriguing transfer rumour – but is it likely to be true?
Why Chelsea might be chasing Crystal Palace’s Daniel Muñoz
Chelsea’s asymmetrical style under Enzo Maresca means that a right wing-back who supports the attack and creates chances in volume is precisely the sort of player they need – the question is perhaps more why they would go after Muñoz when they already have Reece James, among the best in the world, and the developing Malo Gusto.
The key may lie in their midfield depth, which is becoming more of a problem every time the luckless Roméo Lavia goes down with a new injury. With so few options behind Moisés Caicedo and Enzo Fernández (who was recently revealed to have spent four months playing through a bone edema on his knee), James and Gusto have both been pressed into service as central midfielders – which has largely worked while shifting the depth issue to a different position.
Most pundits had assumed that Chelsea would attempt to find a new midfielder in 2026, but it’s equally possible that they resolve the issue by signing a right-back to cover the depth issue that way, with the intention of using James and Gusto in the middle more frequently.
Further encouragement may be offered by Muñoz’s seemingly competitive price tag – Caught Offside’s report echoes other stories on the Colombian’s future by suggesting that he could cost no more than €30m (£26.5m) which is a fine price for a player who has quickly proven his worth at Premier League level.
An excellent crosser of the ball and a precise passer as well as a hard-working defender, Muñoz scored four top-flight goals and created five in his first full season with Palace, which is three times as many goal contributions as James and Gusto combined for in 2024/25. Chelsea’s plan down the right sees them using a wide wing-back who will support the attack from the touchline, and Muñoz seems to be capable of creating and scoring more frequently from those areas than anyone on the books at Stamford Bridge right now.
So there’s a certain logic to the suggestion, even if it has not yet been backed up by more trusted news sources – but will this deal really take place in 2026?
Will Chelsea really make a transfer bid for Muñoz next year?
While a deal for Muñoz can be made to make tactical sense, there is one way in which such a transfer would completely upend several years of precedent set by Chelsea – Muñoz is already 29, almost five years older than any player signed by the club after the current ownership’s very first season in West London, and will be 30 by the start of the 2026/27 season.
Given that it’s highly unlikely that Palace would let him leave mid-season, Chelsea would be casting aside a very clear vision for their work in the transfer market, which focusses on signing young players to long contracts to ensure their long-term value, and they have shown little willingness to make deals of a different ilk since BlueCo established their methodology.
They did make an (aborted) attempt to sign Mike Maignan, who is of a similar age, last summer but that was with his contract expiring, leading to the hope that he could be signed on the cheap – Muñoz signed a new deal at Selhurst Park in April that ties him down until 2028, and there is no reason to believe that Palace (not a club who let their star players slip away easily) will not demand a fair price for their player.
That also makes the widely-repeated claim of a €30m price tag, which appears to have originated in the Spanish press and been parroted ever since without further evidence being provided, questionable in their own right. Chelsea have not shown any desire to sign older players for such fees in years, and it would be strange to see such a rapid change in approach next year given that there have not been any substantive changes at boardroom level or within the recruitment team.
That doesn’t make it impossible that Chelsea are looking at Muñoz, but it does make it feel less likely, and without corroboration of this story from more reputable sources, it’s challenging to feel confident in the chances that such a deal gets negotiated any time soon. This would be a significant departure for Chelsea, even if Muñoz might fit Maresca’s broader strategy.
Chelsea often pull off surprises in the transfer market, but their broader approach has been very consistent – buy young, tie down for the long term, sell high when able. Muñoz would not fit that strategy and would be a short-term purchase who was all but guaranteed to depreciate in value before he left Stamford Bridge. In that light, it’s hard to imagine it happening. Barcelona, on the other hand…
Continue Reading