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Conor Gallagher never imagined playing abroad when he was younger. And why would he? He was, as the massive tifo supporters brought to Stamford Bridge last season read, “Chelsea since birth”. He was certainly Chelsea since he was six, since he started training with their academy. He was Chelsea when on loan at Charlton and Swansea, West Bromwich Albion and Crystal Palace. He was Chelsea when he spent much of last season with the captain’s armband on, playing the most minutes.
So the surreal nature of his unveiling at Atletico Madrid was not merely that he was escorted on the pitch at the Metropolitano by motorbike riders amid fireworks and a light show, speaking his rudimentary Spanish to thousands of fans. It was the turn his career had taken. If Gallagher had felt an old-fashioned figure – the likeable local lad who endeared himself to fans by being one of them and with his conspicuous commitment – he instead, though no fault of his own, became emblematic of the 2024 game. He is the PSR footballer, the pure-profit player. His managers looked at Gallagher and saw a hard-working midfielder. Chelsea’s owners glimpsed a way to pass financial fair play amid their £1.3bn splurge. He turned into a one-man loophole.
If Chelsea’s desperation to sell Gallagher was a feature of the summer, there is the sense he has traded up. Rather than appearing in the Conference League with them, the Champions League beckons with Atletico. “I opened up my options and looked at the bigger picture,” Gallagher said. “It excited me as soon as I knew Atletico Madrid were interested.”
And if Atletico’s interest ever fades, Gallagher could pop across Madrid to the British embassy and offer his services to the diplomatic corps. He was generous towards his former employers. “With Chelsea, I have only got good things to say,” he said. “Amazing football club, my boyhood club. I am so thankful and grateful for everything they did for me in the academy and the first team. I have left Chelsea but I look back at all my memories and I am really happy that I was able to play for them for the couple of years that I did,” he said. “The dream came through. The dream came true. So I am very lucky.”
But the dream was curtailed after 95 games; fewer than it would have been if Mauricio Pochettino had his way. Thomas Tuchel rated him, too. So does Diego Simeone, one of the outstanding midfielders of his generation and one of the finest managers of the last 15 years. Pochettino needed Gallagher to complement the £100m men, Moises Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez. And yet part of Chelsea’s rationale for selling him this summer was their argument he wasn’t good enough technically.
“I don’t think that’s true, personally,” Gallagher said. “I think last season, I had a good season with Chelsea and you could see by Pochettino playing me every game and showing his trust in me. And the fans appreciated what I did on the pitch.” Indeed, the supporters sang his name in the season-opening defeat to Manchester City, while Gallagher lingered in limbo. “I’m really thankful for the support and love Chelsea fans have shown me,” he said; again, behaving with more dignity than Chelsea, though the ownership went unmentioned in his praise for the club.
He was left stuck in a hotel in Madrid when Chelsea’s attempts to buy Samu Omorodion from Atletico broke down. “It was strange,” Gallagher said. “But I was always confident that the deal would go through because of how the manager Simeone and the club spoke about me and to me.” A Chelsea-esque solution materialised when they instead acquired Joao Felix, seemingly to get rid of Gallagher for £35m. So far, the impression is that Atletico have more of a strategy to use Gallagher than Chelsea do for Felix.
But the Portuguese has a seven-year deal at Stamford Bridge. In total, they have 27 players tied down until at least 2029. No such offer of longevity was made to Gallagher. “Chelsea make their own decisions and they’ve brought in some top players on long contracts,” he said. “That wasn’t the situation with me.” He is too polite to point out they have also brought in some mediocre players on long contracts, that some already look surplus to requirements.
But instead, he spent some of his summer at Euro 2024 consulting Kieran Trippier about life at Atletico. He hopes playing in Spain will improve him. He has made Lee Carsley’s first England squad, just as he became an automatic choice for Gareth Southgate’s groups. He has seniority, even if he is reunited with his Under-17 World Cup-winning captain. He is modest enough to reflect on facing Angel Gomes when the latter played for Manchester United’s youth teams. “I was normally chasing his shadow,” he smiled. “He was just running rings around me.”
He worked with Carsley in England Under-21s and the interim manager’s reign starts against the Republic of Ireland in Dublin on Saturday. It is not merely Carsley, Jack Grealish and Declan Rice who have a foot in each camp. Gallagher has an Irish name and an Irish girlfriend, Aine May Kennedy. He was in Dublin in July at the All-Ireland hurling final between Clare and Cork. “It’s a really exciting sport, and tough,” Gallagher said. His next game on Irish soil will give his girlfriend split loyalties. “She always supports me but obviously, she’s an Irish girl and I’m sure she doesn’t mind [who wins],” Gallagher said.
He has enough proof of the complications and the confusion the game can provide. His 18-year association with Chelsea ended a few weeks ago, sold in the name of Boehlynomics. “In football, things happen,” shrugged Gallagher. At the modern Chelsea they do, anyway.
