How Chelsea missed out on 'next Messi' Musiala

FT Desk

• 28 Nov 2022 07:39 GMT
• 4 min read

Jamal Musiala has been described as the 'next Lionel Messi' by Lothar Matthaus after starring for Bayern Munich and Germany. He could have been turning out for Chelsea and England instead.

Musiala has been Bayern's best player at the tender age of 19 this season. The German champions may have spent €41 million in prising Sadio Mane away from Liverpool in the summer, but it's Musiala who has raced to 22 goal involvements in 22 games. He doesn't even play up front.

Just as happy to make goals as he is take them, Musiala laid on Niklas Fullkrug for the equaliser as Germany kept their World Cup hopes alive with a 1-1 draw against Spain at the Al Bayt Stadium in Al Khor on Sunday.

READ: Musiala enjoys CRAZY rise in transfer value

Matthaus, who won the World Cup with Germany at Italia '90, marking Diego Maradona out of the final, was effusive in his praise after the game.

"He can be the Messi of the future, he's excellent," he told BBC Sport. "I've loved him for the last two years. I love his style of football and I love his personality."

Unfortunately for Chelsea, Bayern have also loved Musiala for the last few years, poaching him from under their noses for just €1m in the summer of 2020.

Previously an England youth international who remains best friends with Borussia Dortmund's nascent Three Lions star Jude Bellingham, Musiala only needed to look at the experiences of Fikayo Tomori and Tammy Abraham a few years above him to realise that the path from Chelsea academy to first team was treacherous.

READ: Five legendary players who broke out at the World Cup

Minutes, Brexit and Bright

Bayern offered Musiala a clearer path, and the player, who was born in Stuttgart and has a German mother despite his London accent, took little persuading. Perhaps intelligently, perhaps cynically - maybe both - Bayern signed his Chelsea teammate and friend Bright Arrey-Mbi at the same time.

Brexit also played a role, and Musiala, who still didn't speak perfect German, was looking for a move to the continent. "There were a few interested parties in Europe," he said. "But I've always loved Bayern since I was little. And when such a big club in Germany is interested, you can't say 'no.'"

Unfortunately for England, once Musiala's head was turned at club level, it didn't take long for Manuel Neuer, Thomas Muller and the like to get in his ear about his international future, and he already looks like Germany's best player having switched allegiance last year.

If Chelsea had been able to offer Musiala minutes - Tomori and Abraham found them at AC Milan and Roma respectively - he might have stayed, while the political machinations of the UK were outwith the club's control.

Either way, Chelsea squandered a generational talent, and the result was that England missed out on him too. Both will be hoping Matthaus' words prove simply to be hyperbole.