Aston Villa have agreed a deal with Chelsea for the signing of Alejandro Garnacho on loan with a conditional obligation to buy.
The decision to pursue the 22-year-old has been led by Aston Villa manager Unai Emery, who wanted to sign the winger last summer when he moved from Manchester United to Chelsea.
The Argentina international has undergone a medical and is in Birmingham to complete the move. A four-year deal is in place for the 22-year-old should the conditional obligation-to-buy clause be met and the move made permanent.
The Athletic reported on Tuesday that Villa were in advanced talks to sign Garnacho, 22, on an initial season-long loan with a conditional obligation to buy.
The deal is separate to Chelsea’s £117million ($156.4m) club record transfer of Morgan Rogers, which was confirmed on Tuesday. The fee surpassed Chelsea’s club record of £106m ($141.7m) paid for Enzo Fernandez in 2023.
Garnacho was allowed by new Chelsea manager Xabi Alonso to stay away from the start of the club’s pre-season training to secure a move away from the club.
Villa’s club-record signing of Switzerland international Johan Manzambi from Freiburg is considered to directly replace the outgoing Rogers, thus turning Villa’s attentions towards the recruitment of a wide player. Paris Saint-Germain’s Ibrahim Mbaye and Crysencio Summerville from West Ham United were among the other options.
Garnacho struggled to establish a regular starting spot at Chelsea following his £40m ($53.4m) move from Old Trafford. He started just 22 matches in all competitions, 14 of which were in the Premier League, and scored eight times.
The Atletico Madrid academy product was named in Argentina’s 55-player preliminary squad for the World Cup, but did not make the final list.
Garnacho left United after five years at the club last summer. He scored 26 goals in 144 games for United, but fell out of favour with previous head coach Ruben Amorim, and admitted to doing “some bad things” before his eventual summer exit, which he described as painful.
How will UEFA look at this deal?
Analysis by football finance writer Chris Weatherspoon
As detailed in the latest version of , signing players from Chelsea this window poses a quandary for Aston Villa. Any permanent signing would be deemed a ‘player exchange transaction’ by UEFA, and Villa’s sizeable profit on Morgan Rogers would be reduced in UEFA calculations to the net difference in fees paid for Rogers and, in this instance, Garnacho.
UEFA’s rule on deemed player exchanges covers a period of 45 days, and the Premier League transfer window has only 41 days left to run (as of Tuesday). Villa are in a settlement agreement with UEFA whereby they have little motivation to eat into that Rogers profit, so signing someone from Chelsea would do them no favours there.One workaround is exactly the Garnacho deal now posited: a loan move that can conditionally – and conditional is the key word – turn permanent.
Garnacho started 22 games for Chelsea (Peter Powell/AFP)
If Garnacho’s move were to turn permanent more than 45 days after the Rogers deal completes, Villa would retain the full profit on the latter; Chelsea, too, would bank whatever profit they make on Garnacho without the need for adjustment. They are in their own UEFA settlement agreement and badly need to generate large profits from player trading in 2026-27.
A conditional loan would therefore be beneficial for all parties, but UEFA is also wise to clubs finding loopholes. The governing body’s rulebook dictates that “if a condition is considered to be virtually certain”, the deal must be recognised as a permanent one at the point the loan begins. If, however, “the fulfilment of a condition cannot be assessed with sufficient certainty to trigger the permanent transfer from the inception of the loan”, then clubs can record a deal as a loan initially, then as a permanent transfer only once the relevant condition(s) is met.
Any such conditions are unknown at this stage, but it’s plainly in both Villa and Chelsea’s interests for any permanent transfer to take place later. If Garnacho does move to the Midlands, UEFA will cast a keen eye over matters. But the rules retain scope for manoeuvre, if clubs are savvy enough.
