Fikayo Tomori has finally left Chelsea to join Italian Serie A giants, AC Milan on loan but he might become a permanent signee at Milan at the end of the 2020-2021 season if the Italian club pays Chelsea €30 million.
This means that once the 23-year-old England international impress the handlers of AC Milan, he might switch fully to the Italian side during the 2021 summer transfer window.
The possibility of that happening does not only depend on the performance of Fikayo Tomori but on the financial strength of AC Milan to cough up €30 million to sign the defender permanently.
Ciao @acmilan fans👋🏾.
— Fikayo Tomori (@fikayotomori_) January 22, 2021
Honoured to have this opportunity to fight for this great club, I can’t wait to show myself on the pitch🔴⚫️.
Un grande abbraccio#ForzaMilan❤️🖤. pic.twitter.com/rd55HvHdOA
Recall that the English center-back used to be a regular in coach Frank Lampard’s squad at Chelsea especially during the 2019-2020 season. He played almost all Chelsea’s games last season and he did so well that he was invited to play for England national team which he did for the first time on November 17, 2019.
Afterward, he sustained an injury that kept him out of action for a couple of matches. Before he returned from the injury, Lampard and the England national team had already moved on.
He couldn’t get his place back despite being one of the best defenders at Chelsea last season. Hence, he couldn’t make any national team appearances again since he was not having game time at his club.
Amid the uncertainty in his career, West Ham came to convince him to join the club on loan but Fikayo Tomori turned the club down with the hope that Frank Lampard would give him more opportunity to prove himself.
Unfortunately for the defender, the best Lampard has done for Fikayo Tomori this season was to give him a 45-minute appearance in the Premier League, 2 games in the EFL Cup, and 10 minutes in the FA Cup.
With such gesture, it was clear that the 23-year-old defender was not in Frank Lampard’s plans for this season. But whenever the question of whether the defender still has a chance at the club or not is raised, Lampard would insist that Fikayo Tomori has a long term future with Chelsea.
“He absolutely has a long-term future at this club,” Lampard said earlier in January.
“We’ll see if or when he goes on loan but the moment I got close to Fikayo was when I took him to Derby with me and he was the player of the year there and one of the best players in the Championship that year in my opinion.
“He came back here and played 20-plus games for us at a very young age last year and got in the England squad.
“In my head, there is an absolute long-term plan for Fikayo about his career here. If it is to go and play games [on loan] it will be to absolutely enhance his personal development and hopefully help whatever team he goes to, because that will go hand in hand, and he will come back to us a better player.”
As it stands, the destiny of Fikayo Tomori is no longer in the hands of Chelsea, but in the hands of the player and AC Milan. Once Tomori can impress Milan until the end of the 2020-2021 season and the club can afford €30 million to pay Chelsea during the 2021 summer transfer window, the defender will permanently cut ties with Chelsea.
