Future Argentina star? 

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Chelsea are under new management this season and head coach Enzo Maresca isn’t waiting around in the transfer market to rebuild a squad that fell well short of expectation in the previous Premier League campaign. The club have already spent no less than €101 million on new signings, with the most notable of which being Maresca’s former Leicester City playmaker Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall. However, the Stamford Bridge side are expected to spend even more money before the summer window shuts and it seems as though the next deal to get over the line will be for a young prospect from Argentina. According to reports in England, Chelsea are set to sign Boca Junior defender Aarón Anselmino for a fee of around €20m once the player has agreed to a six-year contract with the English club. But who is the young defender and why are Chelsea so intent on signing him?

Rumour
	A. Anselmino
	Centre-Back
Boca Juniors   82 % Chelsea Professional Football League Premier League

Who is Aarón Anselmino?

At just 19 years of age, there’s little doubt that Anselmino remains a relatively unknown quality even within Argentinian football itself – never mind any sort of reputation in Europe. To date the central defender has played just 10 senior games for Boca Juniors, following 10 years of working his way through the club’s youth ranks. However, despite very little game time to work on, there are already some comparisons that could be made between Anselmino and former Boca players. Five years ago another central defender that was quickly snatched up by a big European club before establishing himself at first team level was Leonardo Balerdi, who joined Borussia Dortmund in 2019 for a fee €15.5m despite playing just five senior games for his boyhood club. Balerdi never quite lived up to his promise at the Bundesliga giants, but has since established himself as a good player at Marseille. Crucially, it seems as though Chelsea are willing to let Anselmino return to Boca on loan following the deal reaching its conclusion. Which may allow the young player to find his feet at senior level before making the move to Europe permanently. 

Some encouraging news for Chelsea fans is another comparison that has already been made between Anselmino and a former Boca player. “In Boca they call him ‘Cata’ because his playing style is similar to Daniel ‘Cata’ Díaz,” revealed Transfermarkt Argentinian football expert Scott Christensen. “You may remember him from his time at Atlético Madrid or Getafe – he didn’t have the most glittering of careers in Europe – but he did have an important history in Boca and even played for the national team.” Indeed, Díaz made just under 200 appearances for Boca and played a vital role in the club winning the Argentine Primera División Apertura in 2005 and Clausura in 2006, as well as the Copa Libertadores in 2007. When coupled with the fact that club president Juan Román Riquelme has also stated that Anselmino is a national team player in the making, it certainly suggests that the young player makes the move to Chelsea with glowing reports from his boyhood club.

Why are Chelsea interested in signing Aarón Anselmino?

While Chelsea have certainly made headlines for the sheer scale of their spending in the transfer market since the arrival of new club owner Todd Boehly, the Stamford Bridge club do deserve some credit for focusing on young players that could develop into the stars of tomorrow. For example, since Boehly opened his cheque book in 2022, the Premier League side have signed no less than 11 players aged 19 or younger. And many of them have been signed with little intention of being thrust into first team football in the immediate future, such as Marc Guiu from Barcelona or Brazilian pair Deivid Washington and Ângelo, who both joined the club from Santos last season. Such signings as well as the imminent arrival of Anselmino certainly suggest that the new Chelsea owners are not only serious about building a squad capable of challenging for major silverware in English football, but also have every intention of bolstering the club’s ranks of young players that will work their way through the youth teams or develop their game on loan at sister clubs.