Chelsea suffer damning Euro 2024 transfer blow

Tom Weber

Updated: 19 Jun 2024 15:13 BST
3 min read

Chelsea's hopes of offloading Armando Broja have taken another hit as the striker appears to have lost his place in Albania's side at Euro 2024.

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The 22-year-old is coming off a disappointing season at Chelsea and Fulham. After making his long-awaited return from a heartbreaking ACL injury in late 2023, Broja struggled to perform and eventually fell out of favour under Mauricio Pochettino.

The striker joined Fulham on loan in January, but his fortunes did not improve. Broja made just eight appearances for the Cottagers, notching one assist. Fulham, naturally, decided against making his loan permanent.

Speaking about the bygone season and his future recently, Broja admitted that rotting on the bench at Fulham 'sucked,' having been sold a dream by coach Marco Silva in the January window.

With Chelsea keen to sell the academy product this summer to make 'pure profit,' speculation surrounding Broja's future has been rampant and a host of clubs in England and on the continent have been linked. Chelsea's asking price could prove an issue, however.

Broja's Euro nightmare

In the above-mentioned interview, Broja insisted that he was now fully focused on doing well with Albania at Euro 2024 before seriously giving thought to his future.

So far, though, his tournament has not gone to plan and this is also bad news for Chelsea. Underdogs Albania gave a good account of themselves in their opening game against Italy but Broja was nothing more than a peripheral figure in that fixture.

As a result, the 22-year-old was dropped for his country's second group game against Croatia. This by itself was already pretty damning for Broja, who is generally considered one of Albania's most promising players.

Worse still was the fact that Albania played brilliantly without Broja against their Balkan rivals. So if clubs were reluctant to splash the cash on the Chelsea man before, they will be even more so now.