{"id":613461,"date":"2022-06-08T02:41:06","date_gmt":"2022-06-08T06:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=613461"},"modified":"2022-06-08T02:41:06","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T06:41:06","slug":"spanish-midfielder-leaving-chelsea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2022\/06\/08\/spanish-midfielder-leaving-chelsea\/","title":{"rendered":"Spanish Midfielder Leaving Chelsea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2022\/06\/07\/chelsea-women-world-class-defender\/\" target=\"_self\">Chelsea<\/a> have confirmed to <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2022\/04\/29\/lautaro-martinez-and-rodrigo-de-paul-swap\/\" target=\"_self\">Atletico Madrid<\/a> that they won&#8217;t trigger the option to buy Spanish midfielder Sa\u00fal \u00d1\u00edguez.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FabrizioRomano\/status\/1534415929580236805?t=U9notIFthA_f7ugFWr_HnA&amp;s=19\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">According to Fabrizio Romano<\/a>, the decision to not activate the \u20ac35 million clause was made a few weeks ago. Now, the 27-year-old will return to Spain and make a decision on his future.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Hello blues,<br \/>I\u2019m writing to take my leave of you. I would like to tell you how I felt during this adventure. Things didn\u2019t start well at all. After a long time at home, changing everything wasn\u2019t easy. (\u2026) <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/HLmfK9BqrD\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/HLmfK9BqrD<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Sa\u00fal \u00d1iguez (@saulniguez) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/saulniguez\/status\/1534219490191360001?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">June 7, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Spanish Midfielder To Depart Chelsea<\/h2>\n<h3>Disappointing Time in England<\/h3>\n<p>The arrival of Sa\u00fal \u00d1\u00edguez from Atletico Madrid was greeted with <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2021\/09\/11\/saul-niguez-debut-one-to-forget\/\" target=\"_self\">much positivity<\/a> but the loan spell was largely disappointing.<\/p>\n<p>The Spanish midfielder managed just 23 appearances for Chelsea during his 12 months at Stamford Bridge. From those outings, Sa\u00fal completed 90 minutes on just five occasions, two of which came in FA Cup wins against Chesterfield and Luton Town respectively &#8211; the latter of which he scored his only goal for the club in a 3-2 win.<\/p>\n<p>In the Premier League, Sa\u00fal was selected in the Chelsea squad on 33 occasions but was an unused substitute 23 times, highlighting how much Thomas Tuchel relied on other members of the squad above him.<\/p>\n<h3>Sa\u00fal Statement<\/h3>\n<p>Taking to Twitter, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/saulniguez\/status\/1534219490191360001?t=I0-eGXnzmjpps_tgxVfDpA&amp;s=19\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sa\u00fal commented<\/a> to the Chelsea fans from his time at the club. He said: &#8220;Hello blues, I\u2019m writing to take my leave of you. I would like to tell you how I felt during this adventure. Things didn\u2019t start well at all. After a long time at home, changing everything wasn\u2019t easy.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Little by little things got better. Everything in life serves to improve and learn, and that\u2019s what I take from this adventure.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I\u2019d like to thank the club for trying to take care of every detail to make me feel at home. I\u2019d also like to give recognition to each worker, thank you.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Thank you for making this club much bigger.<br \/>\nThanks to all the fans for supporting me through thick and thin. I will be forever grateful. Thanks to all the staff for making it possible for me to win titles with the blue shirt.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But above all, I wanted to thank my teammates. They have been fundamental so that I wouldn\u2019t fall apart. They helped me to continue supporting the team and live a calm and positive day to day. Thank you!&#8221;<\/p>\n<h3>Future for Spanish Midfielder<\/h3>\n<p>Having made well over 300 appearances for Atletico, Sa\u00fal now faces an uncertain future. He joined the Blues on deadline day with Tuchel wanting more depth in the middle of the park but with the club not taking up the option to buy, will he return to the Spanish club and become a key player once again?<\/p>\n<p>Sa\u00fal was open to a move away after disagreements with Diego Simeone about where he would like to play.<\/p>\n<p>However, with the World Cup less than six months away, the Spanish midfielder will be looking to secure game time in order to make it on the plane to Qatar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chelsea have confirmed to Atletico Madrid that they won&#8217;t trigger the option to buy Spanish midfielder Sa\u00fal \u00d1\u00edguez. According to Fabrizio Romano, the decision to not activate the \u20ac35 million clause was made a few weeks ago. Now, the 27-year-old will return to Spain and make a decision on his future. Hello blues,I\u2019m writing to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":335,"featured_media":613463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,2,6,30,3,28],"tags":[210,3539],"class_list":["post-613461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-featured","category-la-liga","category-news","category-premier-league","category-transfers","tag-atletico-madrid","tag-saul-niguez"],"modified_by":"Dale Ventham, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/335"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}