When your starting striker goes down injured, you don’t send an email. You book a flight. That’s exactly what Atletico Madrid’s Director of Men’s Professional Football, Mateu Alemany, has done, traveling to London in person to try to hammer out a loan deal for Chelsea forward Nicolas Jackson.
The 25-year-old Senegalese international has become one of the more intriguing transfer sagas of the summer window, with multiple clubs circling a player Chelsea signed from Villarreal back in 2023 for roughly £32 million. The problem for Atletico: they may not be first in line.
Why Atletico needs Jackson now
The urgency behind Alemany’s trip comes down to one name: Alexander Sørloth. The Norwegian striker’s injury has left a significant gap in Diego Simeone’s attack, and the window is ticking.
Atletico aren’t looking to write a massive check. Their preference is a loan arrangement, ideally with some kind of option structure built in. That’s a reasonable ask for a player who just returned from a season-long loan at Bayern Munich, where he failed to trigger any permanent buy clause.
