Chelsea made swap deal offer for Serie A star but transfer now looks complicated

Chelsea reportedly tried signing Inter Milan midfielder Nicolo Barella by offering Romelu Lukaku in a swap deal, though this never materialised and a deal for the Italy international happening any time soon now looks unlikely.

That’s according to a report from Italian outlet Tuttomercatoweb, who suggest that Barella would now probably not move to Chelsea while they’re out of the Champions League, or that he would at least require a massive pay rise to do so.

Barella has been a star player for Inter for some time now and looks like he could surely have a positive impact for a top club like Chelsea, but the Blues are having another pretty dire season and urgently need to get back to winning trophies and qualifying for Europe if they are to be able to attract players of this calibre.

Lukaku ended up moving to Roma on loan instead of re-joining Inter, but he’s still Chelsea’s player so perhaps in theory we could see the west Londoners try this one again in the future.

More likely, however, is that there’s little point in CFC trying this unless their situation improves vastly in the next few months.