Former Chelsea manager Antonio Conte did not want to mess around after his side’s title triumph in 2017.
Chelsea won the Premier League title convincingly, finishing the 2016/17 season with 93 points, and Conte was not ready to rest on his laurels.
Conte wanted Virgil van Dijk, for example, but the club were unable to land the Liverpool defender in the end.
Van Dijk was not the only quality player the Italian chased in the summer of 2017, though.

Chelsea wanted £80m-rated Alex Sandro
Chelsea had just won the Premier League crown and had Marcos Alonso, who played a big part in the club’s success.
In total, the Spaniard made 31 appearances and scored six goals, a huge contribution from the left wing-back.
Yet Conte was still keen to bring in another player who would have almost certainly taken Alonso’s spot in the team: Alex Sandro.
Chelsea tried to lure the Brazilian to Stamford Bridge, but Juventus wanted nearly £80m for Sandro, according to The Telegraph. At that price, unsurprisingly, a deal never happened.
Alonso remained as the team’s first-choice left wing-back and then the club eventually signed Emerson to provide the Spain international with competition.
While Chelsea were able to win the FA Cup, they finished the 2017/18 season in fifth place. However, had they landed the likes of Sandro, Van Dijk and Romelu Lukaku, then things would have probably ended much differently.
Conte is currently working with Lukaku at Napoli. Not too long ago, a member of Conte’s 2017 title-winning Chelsea team Cesc Fabregas was able to stop Lukaku in a game between Napoli and Como.

What Juventus said about Chelsea’s bid for Alex Sandro
Conte would have been frustrated with Chelsea’s failure to capture Sandro, but the Blues certainly did try.
Giuseppe Marotta, who was a director at Juventus at the time, confirmed that Chelsea made a “very good” offer for Sandro.
“Our desire is to not sell any of our most important players,” Marotta told Corriere dello Sport in June 2017 (via Sky Sports). “We said no to a very good offer from Chelsea for Alex Sandro. But we know that we are competing with clubs that are in a position to offer wages that are not rational for us. And players are always their own boss. I do not know how Alex Sandro reacted.”
Had Chelsea gone all the way up to £80m, though, then that probably would have got them the left-back.
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