Chelsea agree deals for £143.6m sextet and will probably sign teenage future Brighton pair for £200m too

Chelsea have arranged six future transfers worth £143.6m for five teenagers and a 20-year-old because they really cannot help themselves at this stage.

The 2025 January transfer window was fun and all, but teams are using the opportunity to pre-arrange transfers years in advance now to steal a march on their rivals.

Chelsea are chief among them but plenty of other sides are indulging in the practice. These are the upcoming transfers sorted for future windows involving Premier League clubs.

Estevao Willian (Palmeiras to Chelsea, £29m rising to £51m, July 2025)
There are more obviously silly numbers involved – 19 goals and 12 assists in 50 games this past season is daft – but a 17-year-old signing what is expected to be at the very least a seven-year contract to join a club littered with equally young and similarly gifted forwards should not be overlooked.

Mauricio Pochettino played an important role in Estevao’s capture and it will be interesting to see whether Enzo Maresca can last long enough to at least oversee his first steps at Stamford Bridge.

The forward made his Brazil debut in September and will bow out at Palmeiras in the Club World Cup, in which he could still possibly face Chelsea in the quarter-final before joining them.

Kevin Danso (Lens to Tottenham, £25m, July 2025)
Spurs themselves have called it an ‘obligation to make the deal permanent in the summer’ for Danso, whose move to Wolves was hijacked in the name of giving Ange Postecoglou some vaguely identifiable players of age during their injury crisis.

Even as that subsides there is a clear role for Danso to play in his second Premier League spell after a forgettable season on loan with Southampton a few years ago.

The clean sheet he helped keep against Manchester United on his full Premier League debut came in his first home game in the competition since Southampton were gubbed 9-0 by Leicester in October 2019; the early indications are that Spurs can be happy with their business.

Lloyd Kelly (Newcastle to Juventus, £20m, July 2025)
Fair play to Newcastle, who signed Kelly as a free agent upon the expiration of his Bournemouth contract, played him 14 times, only half of which were from the start, and then secured a future £20m sale to a clearly quite confused Juventus.

He was one of a few Premier League summer signings instantly moved on in the winter. But Kelly has already started a Champions League knockout stage win while living in Turin so you can see his thinking in pushing for the exit.

Diego Leon (Cerro Porteno to Manchester United, £7m, July 2025)
With a recruitment drive focused more on identifying the best young players and buying in early instead of paying over the odds for those further in their development, the hope is that Leon can follow the pathway of Ayden Heaven before him into the first team.

But there will likely be a period of acclimatisation for the Paraguayan teenager so Patrick Dorgu can rest easy for now.

Dario Essugo (Sporting to Chelsea, £18.5m, June 2025)
Seven-year contract. Option of a further year. Ludicrously young. Barely played top-flight football. All the Chelsea boxes are ticked.

Portugal youth international Essugo has been earmarked as an understudy to Moises Caicedo after playing just over 50 first-team games at senior level. If that doesn’t pan out then Strasbourg will welcome the help.

Kendry Paez (Independiente del Valle to Chelsea, £17.2m, June 2025)
There is substantially less Chelsea hype surrounding Paez but his future move further underlines their commitment to pursuing the best young players in world football, with South America the current hotbed.

Paez will also join sooner and is currently training at Cobham during what Independiente sporting director Luis Saritama has described as “a period of adaptation” at Chelsea’s specific request.

Luka Vuskovic (Hajduk Split to Tottenham, £12m, July 2025)
Seven months after making his senior debut as the youngest player to feature in the Croatian top flight, Vuskovic was snapped up in September 2023 by a Tottenham side declaring dibs almost two years in advance.

The 6ft 4ins 17-year-old is spending his final season before moving to north London permanently on loan in a Belgian relegation battle as one of Westerlo’s top scorers. One of his six goals was obviously a bicycle kick equaliser against title challengers Club Brugge.

Samuel Amo-Ameyaw (Southampton to Strasbourg, £8.29m, July 2025)
After 12 Southampton appearances – four starts, mind you – in two-and-a-half years, Amo-Ameyaw left the Sport Republic stable to hop aboard the BlueCo train with Chelsea’s sister club Strasbourg. And fair enough, really.

Yasin Ozcan (Kasimpasa to Aston Villa, £5.83m, July 2025)
An 18-year-old centre-half who can play at left-back, Ozcan would have come in handy during this most cursed time for Aston Villa defenders but the pre-contract agreement involved him seeing out the season with Kasimpasa, who are eighth in the Turkish Super Lig table and perhaps eyeing European qualification.

The Turkish youth international has made more than 80 first-team senior appearances and will spend his next few months studying extensive tape of high defensive lines.

Vakhtang Salia (Dinamo Tbilisi to Newcastle, undisclosed, August 2025)
“We’re delighted to get ahead of a number of other top clubs to sign Vakhtang,” said Newcastle sporting director Paul Mitchell. “Scouting and recruiting emerging talent is an essential part of building a sustainable future, particularly within the current PSR framework, so the market is fiercely competitive.”

Salia will join upon his 18th birthday in August, before which the Magpies will be thoroughly exploring possible loan avenues for a player who has scored seven goals in 39 first-team games.

Kieran Tierney (Arsenal to Celtic, free, July 2025)
In remarkably modern fashion, Celtic officially confirmed the imminent return of a cult hero in their interim financial reports.

‘During the January 2025 transfer window, we acquired the permanent registration of Jota and the temporary registration of Jeffrey Schlupp. In addition, we extended the contract of Kasper Schmeichel and entered into a pre-contract agreement that will see Kieran Tierney return to Celtic in July 2025. We disposed of the registrations of Kyogo Furuhashi, Alexandro Bernabei and placed Luis Palma, Odin Holm and Stephen Welsh on Loan.’

It’s enough to bring a tear to the eye.

Yun Do-young (Daejeon Hana Citizen to Brighton, £2m, July 2025)
It is expected in some quarters that 18-year-old winger Yun will follow a similar pathway to Kaoru Mitoma by going on out in Europe to build up work permit merit points when he arrives on the coast.

If the South Korean youth international comes anywhere close to matching the success of Mitoma then Brighton will justifiably be fairly thrilled with their work.

Tom Watson (Sunderland to Brighton, £10m, July 2025)
“Tommy is an exciting young talent who we have been tracking for a significant period of time,” said Brighton technical director David Weir of a move the Seagulls pursued in January but could not complete.

Significant competition for Watson emerged since then through Football League transfer experts Crystal Palace but the 18-year-old forward was persuaded by Brighton’s persistence.

Sunderland know they had a talent on their hands after his two goals in just 547 Championship minutes at such a young age, but with a year remaining on his contract they had to cash in or risk losing him for nothing down the line.

Mason Melia (St Patrick’s Athletic to Tottenham, £1.6m rising to £3.2m, January 2026)
Tottenham really are going to have some team a few managers from now. Archie Gray and Lucas Bergvall are basically grey-haired, grizzled veterans at this stage after pulling through an injury crisis, and they will soon be showing the likes of Vuskovic and Melia the ropes.

They will have to wait slightly longer in the case of Melia, whose move as the League of Ireland’s most expensive ever sale cannot be officially ratified until he turns 18 because Brexit.

The forward had a trial with Manchester City and counted Arsenal among his numerous suitors, having made his debut – and scored – at just 15. Frankfurt actually tried to bring him in as Omar Marmoush’s replacement in January.

Geovany Quenda (Sporting to Chelsea, £42.1m, June 2026)
Manchester United were not thrilled to see an obvious target move elsewhere, Ruben Amorim and one of his roaming Sporting wing-backs having been linked for months with a reunion at Old Trafford.

But Chelsea stole in to sort a deal out to bestow upon whoever they appoint as manager in summer 2026 a shiny new signing.

Their willingness to let Quenda stay in Portugal for another season helped Chelsea beat a number of clubs and also negotiate a lower fee, which will still make him a mightily expensive teenager by the time he eventually joins.

Denner Evangelista (Corinthians to Chelsea, £11.5m, June 2026)
The cousin of Arsenal centre-half Gabriel, attacking left-back Denner will join him in London some time after his 18th birthday next February.

Chelsea swooped in despite the Brazil youth international star having not yet made his senior debut for Corinthians.

Dastan Satpaev (Kairat Almaty to Chelsea, £3.3m, August 2026)
It is a record sale for the Kazakh Premier League and a relatively modest five-year deal with a 12-month option at the end. But such is the nature of the transfer, that will actually take Satpaev to summer 2032 if he sees it out alongside an increasingly disgruntled Cole Palmer.

Fabrizio Romano says Chelsea believe Satpaev to have “special skills” but it is weird that their solution to not having a consistently reliable elite centre-forward in 2025 is to keep signing ones who might be ready in 2030 if everything goes perfectly.

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