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Chelsea’s ultimate forgotten man has found a new club three years after Mauricio Pochettino failed to remember him in a viral press conference.<\/strong><\/p>\n Malang Sarr signed for the Blues on a free transfer back in 2020 after he left Nice – making 21 appearances in his first season for the club – including eight times in the Premier League.<\/p>\n He spent the 2020\/2021 campaign on loan at Porto before returning to France with a Monaco loan the following season.<\/p>\n Sarr then returned to the Blues in the hope of finding himself back into the side at Stamford Bridge.<\/p>\n But his first-team prospects were almost immediately dismissed by Pochettino when he was asked about Sarr’s situation in an August 2023 press conference.<\/p>\n A journalist quizzed Pochettino on Sarr and goalkeeper Jamie Cummings following the 3-0 win over Luton after they were not included in the matchday squad.<\/p>\n Brutally, the Argentine coach appeared to have no idea they existed, replying, “Who?”.<\/p>\n Pochettino then added: “Oh my goodness. I don’t know what I can tell you. I don’t know because you surprised me! It’s like you punch (me in the face) and I am like this (startled). Because we were talking about Luton!”<\/p>\n READ MORE: <\/strong>The 12 weirdest transfers you probably missed during the World Cup<\/strong><\/p>\n As expected, Sarr was not part of Pochettino’s plans and was banished to training with the Under 21 side after being left out of their Premier League squad and losing his first-team locker.<\/p>\n At the time, The Athletic reported that his friends were “worried” about Sarr’s state of mind because of the situation.<\/p>\n He went more than a year without playing, with a transfer to Le Havre collapsing and offers from Besiktas, AEK Athens.<\/p>\n In the end, Sarr’s contract – said to be worth \u00a3100,000-a-week – was terminated by mutual agreement in July 2024 and he proceeded to head back to France with a permanent move to RC Lens.<\/p>\n After playing 62 times with Lens, who finished second last season and won the Coupe de France, Sarr has now moved to the Saudi Pro League with NEOM S.C.<\/p>\n Fabrizio Romano called the move “a surprise” and claimed that the Frenchman had “five more proposals from Europe”.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Sarr finally responded to the put-down by Pochettino in an appearance on the Kampo podcast and admitted he “felt like smashing everything”.<\/p>\n Sarr added that, “to say I held a grudge is a strong word” and that eventually initial resentment from the comment faded away.<\/p>\n However, he is adamant that Pochettino was fully aware of him and he had even tried to sign him at Tottenham.<\/p>\n “In 2019, Pochettino brought my agent to London to convince me to sign for Tottenham,” he told Kampo.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, I’ll go even further. When I came back from my loan at Monaco, I was in rehab all summer at Chelsea – it was just me and the physios – he signed me, gave me a tour of the club, and came to see me.<\/p>\n \u201cHe called his assistant, said: \u2018Look who’s here, we tried to bring him to Tottenham, now we find ourselves working together here.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cHe gave me a hug and said: \u2018Oh, you’re already on the mat, it’s been a week since your operation, did it go well?\u2019 There’s no way he didn\u2019t know me!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chelsea’s ultimate forgotten man has found a new club three years after Mauricio Pochettino failed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19658","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\/19658","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=19658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}How did Malang Sarr react to Mauricio Pochettino’s brutal put-down?<\/h2>\n