Antonio Conte has confirmed that he wanted to get Virgil van Dijk to Chelsea before Liverpool agreed to make the Dutchman the world’s most expensive defender in a £75 million deal with Southampton.
“This is football, this is life,” Conte said when asked about Chelsea missing out on Van Dijk. “For sure it was our target [to sign him], but as you know very well, football is this. You can have a lot of targets but then you must be able to reach them. The transfer market is not simple for any club.”
Conte grew increasingly frustrated last summer with Chelsea’s failure to secure several of his priority targets, with Manchester United hijacking the Blues’ proposed move for Romelu Lukaku and Juventus refusing to lower their asking price for Alex Sandro.
Van Dijk made it clear that Liverpool was his preferred destination last summer, when the Merseyside club were the subject of an official complaint from Southampton for tapping up and temporarily forced to withdraw their interest.
Conte’s disappointment at missing out on the Dutchman will be softened by the breakthrough form of Andreas Christensen, who has displaced David Luiz in the centre of the Chelsea defence since November and signed a new long-term contract on Tuesday that will keep him at Stamford Bridge until June 2022.
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