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Done dealUpdated 13:30 UK · 2 Sept

Deivid Washington to Strasbourg
Chelsea complete deadline-day sale

ChelseaChelseaStrasbourgStrasbourgFee€16mReliability100%
The story so far
  1. 1 Sept
    Move confirmed
    Chelsea and Strasbourg both announced Washington's permanent transfer, with the striker signing a contract until 2031.
  2. 22 Aug
    Fee agreed
    Reports said Chelsea and Strasbourg had agreed a fee for Washington, roughly half the sum discussed in the collapsed 2024 deal.

The move in full

Chelsea have sold striker Deivid Washington to sister club Strasbourg on transfer deadline day, two years after a much bigger version of the same deal collapsed.

Deivid Washington has completed a permanent move from Chelsea to Strasbourg, with both clubs confirming the transfer on deadline day, 1 September. The 21-year-old Brazilian striker has signed a five-year contract with the Ligue 1 club, running until 2031. Neither club has published the fee, but reporting in France and England puts it at around €8m, with a sell-on clause included; L'Equipe had it nearer €10m. Either way it is roughly half the guaranteed fee discussed the last time this move was on the table.

That is because this deal has a long history. Strasbourg agreed to sign Washington in August 2024 for a fee reported at more than €21m plus €3m in add-ons, only for Chelsea to call it off after the Premier League and FIFA raised concerns about a transfer between two clubs under the same ownership group. Chelsea and Strasbourg are both owned by BlueCo, and regulators were uneasy about a deal moving between them on those terms. Two years on, with the fee cut roughly in half, the move has finally gone through.

Strasbourg's interest in Washington was never really in doubt. He arrived at Chelsea from Santos in 2023 as a highly rated teenage forward, and he remains a Brazil Under-20 international with 12 caps and three goals, including a run to the 2025 South American Under-20 Championship title in which he scored three goals in seven games. Strasbourg, as Chelsea's Ligue 1 sister club, are again using that relationship to take on a player Chelsea rate as talented but who has not yet shown it consistently at senior level, betting that regular first-team football in France can do what a fringe role in England could not.

For Chelsea, this is a loss on paper — they paid Santos around €16m for Washington in 2023 — but not much of a footballing one. He made only three senior appearances across three years at Stamford Bridge and had drifted out of first-team plans entirely, spending last season with the club's Under-21 side. The sale was part of a wider deadline-day tidy-up that also saw midfielder Dario Essugo sent out on loan.

Washington's recent form explains why Chelsea were willing to let him go for a cut-price fee. Sent back to Santos on loan for the 2025 season, he managed just three goals in 36 appearances. This season, in Chelsea's Under-21 side, he had yet to find the net before the move to France went through. It is a modest return for a player once considered one of the more promising forwards in Chelsea's academy pipeline.

He joins Hugo Oliveira's Strasbourg squad with immediate effect and was available to be involved against Troyes at the weekend. Given his lack of end product in recent seasons, Washington looks likely to start out as competition and depth in attack rather than a guaranteed starter, with Strasbourg giving him time and regular football to show whether the talent that persuaded Chelsea to sign him, and Strasbourg to pursue him twice, can finally translate into goals.

What it does to the model

Washington barely featured for Chelsea's first team, so his exit changes almost nothing about how Bawler rates Chelsea's actual matchday squad. For Strasbourg it adds a fresh attacking option, but with no senior goal record to speak of, Bawler's model will only start crediting Strasbourg's forward line differently once Washington is actually getting minutes and creating or scoring chances in Ligue 1.

How this is scored100%
  • Announced by the clubs100

A sourcing score, not a chance of completion: it grades how solid the reporting behind the move is. The stage and the evidence come from the sources listed below; the arithmetic is fixed in code, the same for every deal.

Sources

Related: Strasbourg team page · All transfersStrasbourg — every match prediction

Where this move lands

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