Blues boss Maurizio Sarri is rightly frustrated by his employers' reluctance to invest in players over 30 - if you're good enough, you're old enough
Before selling Cristiano Ronaldo to Juventus, the biggest mistake Real Madrid president Florentino Perez had ever made in the transfer market was allowing Claude Makelele to join Chelsea.
In the summer of 2003, the French defensive midfielder was seeking a pay rise that still would have only seen him earn half as much as his compatriot, Zinedine Zidane.
In an embarrassing show of ignorance, Perez utterly dismissed the merits of a player who was integral to how Real were playing at the time and deemed Chelsea's offer of £16.8 million for a 30-year-old far too good to turn down.
"He wasn't a header of the ball and he rarely passed the ball more than three metres," the Santiago Bernabeu supremo smugly reasoned. "Younger players will arrive who will cause Makelele to be forgotten."
The stupidity of the sale has never been forgotten, though, at least not in Madrid.
Bizarrely, it seems they have shorter memories at Chelsea, with whom Makelele won two Premier League titles, two League Cups and one FA Cup during six successful seasons at Stamford Bridge.
How else to explain the Blues' ageist and self-defeating policy of nothing more than one-year deals for players aged 30 or over?
Chelsea boss Maurizio Sarri has already publicly admitted he would scrap the restrictive stance if he could, given it has caused consternation with several members of his squad seeking contract extensions, including Willian, David Luiz and Cesc Fabregas, who has just departed for Monaco, leaving the Blues without a back-up for playmaker Jorginho.
More importantly, the west London club's reluctance to invest in players the wrong side of 30 is also frustrating the manager's attempts to add some badly-needed firepower to his team, in the shape of Gonzalo Higuain.
The Argentine turned 31 last month and, as well as being put off by the complexities of negotiating a deal with two clubs – Juventus own Higuain but he joined AC Milan last summer on loan for €18M (£16m/$20m) with a view to a permanent transfer for €36m (£32m/$40m) – his age is clearly an issue for Chelsea.
Their caution is understandable, of course. Higuain's very best years may well be behind him. Furthermore, in England, he is primarily known as a mentally fragile player who misses big chances in big games (a.k.a. the reason why Messi has never won a major international tournament).
Such a reductive appraisal does Higuain a great disservice. We are talking about one of the most prolific strikers of the past decade.
www.goal.com/en/news/higuain-too-old-at-31-why-ageist-chelsea-wont-do-any-better-than-/zz6jovns3g7y1miybglefw9d9
