Chelsea sign teenager Oriol Romeu from Barcelona on four-year deal

Chelsea completed the £4.7 million signing of Barcelona midfielder Oriol Romeu on Thursday in a deal which provides European football with a blueprint as to how the Spanish champions intend to avoid a repeat of the Cesc Fabregas saga.

Chelsea recruit Oriol Romeu on Barcelona's terms as Catalan club seek to avoid another Cesc Fabregas saga
Bolstering team: Chelsea have signed teenager Oriol Romeu from Barcelona for an undisclosed fee Credit: Photo: GETTY IMAGES

The Catalan side agreed to let the highly-rated 19-year-old defensive midfielder join Andre Villas-Boas’s team on the condition that Chelsea acquiesced to a raft of clauses allowing Barcelona to buy him back should he develop into yet another high-profile alumnus of the club’s La Masia academy.

Barcelona will be able to buy Romeu for £8.7 million next summer or £13 million in 2013 should his performances in west London indicate Pep Guardiola’s side erred in accepting Chelsea’s offer, which could rise as high as £8.7 million if he meets various performance-related clauses.

Should neither of those options be activated, the Spanish team will then have first refusal on the player for the remaining two years of his contract, meaning any offer they make must be given preference should it match a bid from elsewhere.

Such terms were also written in to the £12 million deal to take the striker Bojan Krkic to Roma earlier this summer, and it is thought the Spanish side’s hierarchy are determined to make a “Fabregas clause” a standard part of any contract signed at home or abroad by graduates of La Masia.

The practice is commonplace in Spain with Dani Parejo, the former QPR midfielder, having twice joined clubs after signing deals containing buy-back clauses.

Romeu will complete his move once he returns from the under-20 World Cup in Colombia.

The defensive midfielder, a tactically astute, technically gifted player also capable of being stationed at centre back, has been compared to Sergio Busquets in Spain, but possesses a similar style to Emmanuel Petit, the former French international who played for both clubs.

He has been assured by his new manager that he will figure in Chelsea’s first team this season, something that is likely to have gone a long way to persuading him to move to England after finding his path to the top flight blocked in Catalunya by Busquets and Javier Mascherano.

“It is a part of the squad in which we are struggling with numbers because of Michael Essien’s injury and Oriol is a player with a bright future,” said Villas-Boas of his second signing since taking the Stamford Bridge post, after the Belgian goalkeeper Thibault Courtois.

“One of the hardest jobs we are going to have is convincing these players, who are going to have offers, to stay with our B team,” said Barcelona’s sporting director Andoni Zubizarreta.