\n<\/p>\n
Chelsea moved to protect one of their prospects from the interest of Bayern Munich and Juventus this week by handing Derry a new long-term contract, only to immediately send the 19-year-old out on loan to Sporting Lisbon for the season.<\/span><\/p>\n According to transfer expert Fabrizio Romano, the loan runs until next summer and does not include an option to buy, with Chelsea keen to retain full control of a player they rate highly while giving him regular senior football away from Stamford Bridge. <\/span><\/p>\n The teenager, who is the son of former Crystal Palace and Leeds midfielder Shaun Derry, made his first senior appearances for Chelsea last season, totalling three outings in all competitions after breaking through from the academy, while also impressing regularly for the club’s Under-21 side and earning youth caps for England along the way.<\/span><\/p>\n Derry’s rise has been rapid by any standard. He arrived at Chelsea only last summer from Crystal Palace’s academy, having turned down a professional deal at Selhurst Park, and interest from two of European football’s biggest institutions in the space of a single season is a strong indicator of how highly his potential is regarded outside the club as well as within it.<\/span><\/p>\n His breakthrough season included a bittersweet senior debut, starting against Nottingham Forest in May before a head injury during the match required hospital treatment. Sporting, who reached the Champions League quarter-finals last season, now become the platform on which Chelsea hope to accelerate his development before a possible recall to west London.<\/span><\/p>\n The move fits a pattern Chelsea have followed with several of their academy graduates in recent years: lock down the contract first to protect the asset, then loan the player to a club capable of offering a genuine pathway to regular first-team football, rather than fringe involvement in a squad as talented and as crowded as Chelsea’s own. <\/span><\/p>\n Chelsea will continue to cover Derry’s wages in full during his time in Portugal, underlining how much value the club places on retaining full ownership of his career.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chelsea moved to protect one of their prospects from the interest of Bayern Munich and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}