Why Chelsea paid a stupidly high transfer fee to bring back David Luiz

Sideshow Bob-lookalike and comedic defender David Luiz is apparently returning to Chelsea from Paris Saint-Germain. Just two summers ago, the marauding central defender, who was prone to hilarious gaffes and seldom of use going forward,

was sold by the Londoners to the nouveaux riches in the other capital across the Channel. They collected about $70 million for him, in the exchange rate of the day. A new world record for a defender.

Chelsea laughed all the way to the bank.

And now he’s going back for some $50 million. Because … well, it’s complicated.

Antonio Conte, the new Chelsea manager, likes to build around a robust defense. And while David Luiz is inarguable a passionate defender, his heart has never quite matched his competence, or lack thereof.

Luiz, a devout Christian who was baptized in his PSG teammate Maxwell’s pool once and promised to stay celibate until he got married — after years of non-celibacy — once declared that he believed in fate. “Our purpose,” he declared while still at Chelsea the first time around, “has already been mapped out.”

But David Luiz’s purpose, it seems, may have been to inflate the market for central defenders. Since his move, teams have had to overpay massively for them. Two months after the Brazilian’s move to Paris, Manchester City coughed up $55 million for Eliaquim Mangala, who was largely untested and has proved to be a big disappointment. This summer, City forked over $65 million in fees and potential add-ons to Everton for John Stones. Arsenal just paid Valencia some $46 million for Shkodran Mustafi. Eric Bailly cost Manchester United $42 million. He, like Samuel Umtiti, who went to Barcelona for $28 million, had a thin resume but cost a premium all the same. The only reason Bayern Munich got Mats Hummels for a mere $39 million was that his contract was up next summer.

The scarcity of reliable central defenders has stretched on for years now, but the point when the price for them soared more or less coincides with David Luiz’s move to PSG.

He returns to Chelsea for a good deal less than what he left for, but still an amount that feels like paying mansion money to buy a trailer.

It’s quite possible though that because of the market Chelsea set by selling him so expensively, he was all the club could afford when it needed a viable successor to John Terry to play alongside Gary Cahill, while the young Kurt Zouma recovers from injury. AC Milan wouldn’t surrender Alessio Romagnoli for a similar amount paid for David Luiz, and Napoli turned down an approach for Kalidou Koulibaly — presumably for a comparable sum as well. Boxed into a corner, Chelsea had no choice but to overpay for a player it already knew wasn’t quite up to snuff.

Conte noted that the solidly middle-class clubs of Europe increasingly resist the approaches by the elite teams for their best players by demanding extravagant sums, creating a distorted kind of marketplace. That’s probably true, as increased broadcast and sponsorship revenue and a new age of financial responsibility has lessened the need to sell for many clubs.

And so Chelsea wound up paying a king’s ransom for a deeply flawed defender with amusing hair and reckless runs forward.