On January 10th, four days before Manchester United's massive clash against Tottenham Hotspur, the Premier League was rocked by shocking news: Chelsea's midfield engine, N'Golo Kante, had officially joined Manchester United.
And what price did Manchester United pay? In addition to sending Mateo Kovacic to Stamford Bridge in a direct exchange, they also paid 48 million euros in cash.
Actually, most fans didn't expect Kante to leave mid-season.
After all, he had made tremendous contributions to Chelsea's recent Premier League title win and was still widely regarded as a world-class defensive midfielder.
However, there was a huge disagreement between Kante himself and head coach Maurizio Sarri regarding his role on the pitch.
Sarri not only insisted on giving the primary defensive midfield position to his favorite player, Jorginho, but he even publicly claimed that Kante's passing and receiving abilities didn't meet his tactical requirements for that role.
As a result, Sarri forcibly repositioned Kante further up the pitch as an attacking, box-to-box midfielder.
Kante clearly struggled to adapt to this new role, as evident from his recent individual statistics.
In fact, when the summer transfer window opened before this season, Chelsea had already priced Kante at an eye-watering 98 million euros to deter suitors—a figure later confirmed by the British media outlet Daily Mail.
So, his actual sale in the winter window wasn't entirely unexpected for those paying close attention.
As for Kante's own perspective, his reasoning was quite straightforward: if he couldn't play in his best position at the club, it would inevitably affect his standing and form for the French national team.
Moreover, his contract renewal negotiations with Chelsea had hit a severe snag.
Kante's original weekly wage was only £150,000, which wasn't particularly high for a world-class defensive midfielder, so he naturally hoped to increase it to £300,000 per week to match his status.
The problem was, Chelsea's highest weekly wage at the time was Eden Hazard's £200,000.
If Kante's salary surpassed Hazard's, would the Belgian star refuse to renew with Chelsea and instead force a move to Real Madrid, who had already shown massive interest?
The Chelsea board hesitated.
Of course, money and positioning weren't the only reasons.
Chelsea's recent performances on the pitch had been dismal, dropping to sixth in the Premier League standings and losing the initiative in the race for the crucial top four.
Last season, Chelsea finished fifth, meaning they could only compete in the Europa League this season.
Would they miss out on the Champions League again next season? Any ambitious and talented player would find it hard to accept not playing in the Champions League.
After all, it's the highest honor in club football.
Additionally, there was massive internal turmoil in the Chelsea dressing room.
Previously, whether under Mourinho or Antonio Conte, internal issues usually surfaced in the year after winning a title.
But Sarri had miraculously managed to ignite the dressing room in his very first year.
In a recent cup match against Manchester City, Sarri wanted to substitute goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga for Willy Caballero for the penalty shootout.
But Kepa flat-out refused to leave the pitch, waving his manager away, ultimately leading to Chelsea's defeat.
It's worth noting that in the long history of Europe's top five leagues, almost no player had ever blatantly refused to be substituted on live television.
It signified a player openly challenging, and even humiliating, the head coach.
After the match, beneath Sarri's calm exterior lay surging anger, but he could only impose superficial financial penalties—after all, Kepa was a high-priced signing protected by the management.
This incident directly led to the Chelsea dressing room spiraling out of control.
Hazard, naturally, was among those causing friction.
Forced to sit on the bench occasionally and even asked to play a supporting 'false nine' role for his teammates, he had long been dissatisfied.
He famously told the media, "I'll play my way, and others can say whatever they want. I don't care!"
But even this wasn't the final straw that broke the camel's back.
Earlier this month, Sarri had fielded key first-team players like Willian, Olivier Giroud, and Kante, along with several substitutes, in a training match against Chelsea's youth team to boost morale.
The result? A humiliating 3–3 draw, with Chelsea's seniors unable to defeat their own youth team.
If they couldn't even beat teenagers in training, how could they compete for a top-four spot?
Seeing the writing on the wall, Kante decisively chose to reject the contract renewal offer and submitted a formal transfer request to the club, hoping to move away during the winter window.
The moment this news broke, major European clubs rushed to submit offers.
Among them, Real Madrid, Manchester United, and Paris Saint-Germain were the most active.
Let's start with Real Madrid.
Under the leadership of Julen Lopetegui, they had gone a full four hundred minutes without scoring a single goal, and Real Madrid fans were already deeply missing Cristiano Ronaldo.
After all, Real Madrid's greatest strength used to be their terrifying attacking prowess, but now neither Karim Benzema, Gareth Bale, nor Vinicius Jr. could play a decisive, consistent role.
This left Real Madrid's frontline as stagnant as a pool of dead water.
Then, in October, Real Madrid urgently replaced their head coach with Santiago Solari.
But this guy turned out to be even worse than Lopetegui, directly leading the team to a poor record of 9 wins, 3 draws, and 6 losses, accumulating only 30 points.
Real Madrid's management had already quietly approached Zinedine Zidane, hoping he would take charge of the Galactic Battleship once again to save them.
However, Zidane made six strict demands before agreeing to return: absolute authority in the dressing room, the right to sell players he didn't need and so on.
In simpler terms, it was about power, salary, and transfer objectives.
What were those transfer objectives? Try to sign Jeremy Ling, Kylian Mbappe, or N'Golo Kante.
Zidane knew that Real Madrid's main problem lay in their attack.
Previously, they had formidable players who could suppress opponents in their own half, greatly reducing the defensive pressure on the midfield and backline.
Now, with Cristiano Ronaldo gone, the defensive flaws were painfully exposed.
However, Zidane also knew how incredibly difficult it would be to sign Ling or Mbappe mid-season, so he settled for Kante as a brilliant second-best option to directly strengthen the defense.
Faced with Zidane's extremely harsh conditions, President Florentino Perez agreed to all of them, as Real Madrid had reached their most critical moment of the decade.
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A few days earlier, Manchester United CEO Ed Woodward had just received a massive official offer for Jeremy Ling from Madrid.
€210 million!
To be honest, when Woodward saw the fax, his heart couldn't help but race at the sheer size of the number.
But that was all—there was no further thought of accepting it.
Because in the recently updated Transfermarkt valuations, the top spot wasn't held by Neymar or Mbappe, nor by Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo.
It was Manchester United's Jeremy Ling, valued at exactly €210 million!
Second place went to Mbappe (€200 million), while third and fourth were Neymar and Messi, both valued at €150 million.
Further down the list, Salah, Harry Kane, Antoine Griezmann, Kevin De Bruyne, Philippe Coutinho, and Hazard were all valued close to €150 million.
Outside the top ten were Raheem Sterling, Paulo Dybala, Kante, Dele Alli, Leroy Sane, Cristiano Ronaldo, and others.
According to the traditional practice in the top five leagues, a player's actual transfer fee tends to be much higher than their estimated Transfermarkt valuation.
Moreover, Jeremy Ling was Manchester United's undisputed star player and captain—there was absolutely no way they would sell him right now!
Unless Woodward wanted to receive literal death threats from the fans, so he decisively rejected Real Madrid's bid and instead aggressively joined the race to sign Kante.
In fact, Manchester United had made a habit of poaching Chelsea's players in recent years.
For example, Juan Mata, Nemanja Matic, and even Romelu Lukaku could somewhat be considered, as Chelsea and Everton had basically reached an agreement at the time, but Manchester United swooped in and used pure money to snatch him away.
Mourinho planned to exchange Kovacic for Kante and then pay Chelsea a little extra cash to sweeten the deal.
To this end, he had already spoken seriously with Kovacic in advance to convince him.
Currently, Manchester United had a surplus of midfielders, and Mourinho preferred defensive tactics, typically starting two defensive midfielders.
So, Kovacic would likely only sit on the bench for the rest of the season.
But going to Chelsea was completely different.
Although Sarri is an Italian coach, he employs a highly possession-based, attacking style of play (Sarriball).
Moreover, Chelsea was precisely lacking a progressive, ball-carrying midfielder, and Kovacic could develop much better there.
After this earnest tactical analysis from Mourinho, Kovacic was also somewhat persuaded.
He already had major titles like the Champions League, La Liga, the Premier League, and the Club World Cup on his resume, so there weren't many more team honors left for him to pursue as a squad player.
However, he hadn't won those awards as a guaranteed, undisputed key starter.
So, a platform where he could showcase himself every week was more important to his career right now.
In the end, all parties agreed, and the two clubs finalized the massive swap deal!
@FabrizioRomano: N'Golo Kanté to Manchester United, HERE WE GO! Mateo Kovačić joins Chelsea + €48m fee to CFC. Huge deal completed. 🚨🔴
@CarefreeChelsea: We just sold our best midfielder so Sarri can play Jorginho. I hate this club sometimes.
@UtdTrey: Kante, Pogba, and Ling in the same team. The league is officially over. Hand us the trophy now!
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