Zola reiterates that Chelsea want to keep hold of Hudson-Odoi
Chelsea assistant manager Gianfranco Zola has reiterated the fact that the club want to keep hold of Callum Hudson-Odoi amidst interest from Bayern Munich but the club legend couldn’t offer any assurances over his future.
Hudson-Odoi stole the show on Sunday as the 18-year-old showed a brilliant bit of ball control to score in Chelsea’s 3-0 win over Sheffield Wednesday in the fourth round of the FA Cup.
The youngster has so far refused to put pen to paper on a new deal to extend his stay at Stamford Bridge, with Bayern Munich expressing their interest with repeated bidding.
“We want him to stay as well, we were singing for him to stay,” Zola told a news conference. “I don’t know, we want him to stay. He has a contract, we are training.
“We believe in what he can do for this team. I don’t think there are many 18-year-old players around Europe that are playing as much as him in a big team.
“If you look at Juventus, all the big teams, they don’t have many 18-year-old players playing like we do. That shows that we believe in him, we think he can be an important player for us, so we will see what happens.
“We can do as much as we can do. From our point of view, he has a lot of strong players next to him. But we still find the space for him to play. I want to stress, if you look at the big clubs in Europe there aren’t many 18-year-olds playing as much he plays. It means we have trust. And so we are showing this.”’
Zola, however, did not guarantee that the 18-year-old will stay at the club for sure.
“No, look I am not the club, I work for the club. I can do as much as I can, but then these are decisions that don’t belong for me.
“There is certainly a good understanding between the management and the club, but at the end of the day I cannot say more than that.”
The Italian also dismissed any rumours about Hudson-Odoi refusing to play amid speculations surrounding his future.
“Did he look like he didn’t want to play?” Zola said. “Also yesterday in training his attitude was excellent, he really played well. Yesterday in training he scored a fantastic goal. He didn’t show any sign [that he didn’t want to play] so that is why he played.”
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