5 hours ago
17
Deivid Washington is once again in discussions to move from Chelsea to RC Strasbourg, reviving a transfer that spectacularly fell apart at the finish line less than a year ago. The deal would send the 21-year-old Brazilian striker to the French club that shares an owner with Chelsea, a detail that has made this particular transaction far more complicated than your average player sale.
Both clubs fall under the BlueCo umbrella, the ownership group that controls Chelsea. That shared corporate parent is precisely why a nearly identical transfer collapsed in August 2024, when regulators flagged the arrangement over multi-club ownership rules.
A deal that already died once
Washington joined Chelsea from Brazilian club Santos in August 2023 for a reported fee of around €16 million, with an additional €4 million in potential add-ons. He signed a seven-year contract.
Washington managed just three senior appearances for Chelsea and failed to find the net in any of them.
By late August 2024, Chelsea and Strasbourg had reportedly agreed on terms to move Washington permanently. The fee was set at €21 million plus up to €3 million in bonuses. But the deal was scrapped during the medical stage, not because of any injury concern, but because of regulatory scrutiny around the multi-club ownership model.
Washington’s winding road
After the Strasbourg move fell through, Washington was loaned back to Santos for the 2025 season. His stint in Brazil’s top flight was modest at best: 17 appearances and a single goal in Série A.
His reported market value has cratered accordingly, now sitting at approximately €3 million. That’s a steep decline from the €16 million Chelsea originally paid, and an even steeper drop from the €21 million Strasbourg was apparently willing to shell out just months earlier.
Washington is still only 21, born on June 5, 2005, in Itumbiara, Brazil. At 1.87 meters tall, he has the physical profile that clubs covet in a modern striker.
Why this time might be different
FIFA has been tightening its rules around multi-club ownership in recent years, but it hasn’t banned transfers between commonly owned clubs outright. The key requirement is that any such deal must be conducted at arm’s length, meaning the terms need to reflect what two unrelated parties would agree to on the open market. Given that Washington’s market value has dropped significantly since the last attempt, a lower fee might actually make a new deal easier to justify as fair value.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
English (US) ·