The capital gain is a significant one. Last summer, when Atalanta decided to invest €16 million in a player born in 2008, still underage at the time, it looked like a slightly audacious move. Once again, the Percassis and their recruitment team have been proved right: Honest Ahanor, signed from Genoa twelve months ago, has just been sold to Chelsea for almost €48 million including bonuses. He is the second player to move from La Dea to the Blues in the space of a few weeks, after Palestra. The difference is that Ahanor will not be playing at Stamford Bridge, but in another part of London: Croydon. Chelsea have chosen to send him on loan to Crystal Palace.
The deal between the three clubs is unusual, but it creates what they might call a win-win situation for everyone involved. As The Athletic reported, citing sources at Chelsea, Ahanor is viewed as an investment for the future rather than a player ready to step straight into a starting role. Once the initial agreement with Atalanta was in place, Chelsea’s executives set about finding the best way to keep him playing regularly. And to do it in the Premier League. That is where the deal gets strange. The agreement with Atalanta is actually a pre-agreement: the permanent transfer will be completed in the summer of 2027, when Ahanor officially joins the Chelsea squad.
Over the past few years, Crystal Palace and Chelsea have developed a particularly close relationship in the transfer market. Ahanor is now part of it, arriving to help fill the void left by Chadi Riad, with the Palace centre-back sidelined by a serious anterior cruciate ligament injury. The two London clubs have already completed several deals in recent windows. Last July, for example, Maxence Lacroix left Croydon for Chelsea in a deal worth €60 million. A few weeks later, Disasi made the journey in the opposite direction, joining Crystal Palace on loan.
Formally, the three clubs are treating the two deals announced in recent hours as separate transactions. Atalanta have agreed to loan Ahanor to Crystal Palace until the end of the season, so, on paper, he remains an Atalanta player. Chelsea, meanwhile, have already agreed to complete his permanent transfer in the summer of 2027. There was no other way around it. Premier League regulations place specific restrictions on loans between clubs in the same division. Among other things, they prevent a club from having more than one player on loan from the same team at the same time, while a Premier League club cannot take on loan, in the same transfer window, a player who has just been bought by another side in the division. Ahanor, then, could not have joined Crystal Palace on loan, since Disasi is already in exactly the same situation, nor could he have gone to any other Premier League club.
Chelsea buying a young talent and then allowing him to remain temporarily with his former club is not a new idea. In June 2024, for example, the Blues reached a pre-agreement with Palmeiras for Estevao Willian, leaving the player in Brazil for another season. In the same transfer window, Chelsea signed goalkeeper Mike Penders from Genk and allowed him to stay in Belgium until the following summer. Ahanor’s case is slightly different. He has not officially been bought yet and will be loaned out by his current club to a third party before eventually joining Chelsea. The logic behind the operation, however, is essentially the same. And the arrangement works for everyone.
For Ahanor and Chelsea, it could also accelerate the player’s adaptation to the Premier League ahead of next season. If he can establish himself at Crystal Palace over the coming months, as Xabi Alonso and the executives at Stamford Bridge hope, Ahanor will have a year to get used to the pace, intensity and physical demands of English football before making his permanent move. He will also have time to settle into life in a country different from Italy. The geographical proximity of the two London clubs makes it easier to keep Ahanor and his future club close. He can get to Chelsea’s training ground at Cobham, south of London, without much difficulty, while the Blues’ executives and staff can keep tabs on him at Selhurst Park. For Atalanta, another sizeable capital gain is already taking shape.