Enzo Fernandez, the metronome — analysing Chelsea’s British transfer record signing
https://theathletic.com/4142879/2023/01/31/enzo-fernandez-british-transfer-record/
Enzo Fernandez. A record British transfer spend of €121million (£106million).
Surely we’re talking about a well-established player with multiple seasons under their belt, entering the peak years of their career?
Wrong. A 22-year-old Enzo Fernandez arrives at Stamford Bridge with 17 domestic league games in European football for Benfica, having only arrived from River Plate for €14million (£12.3m) in July.
It has been a rollercoaster eight months for Fernandez.
He has been a near ever-present for a Benfica side currently sitting seven points clear at the top of the Primeira Liga. He has helped his club reach the knockout stages in his maiden season in the Champions League — topping a group containing PSG and Juventus.
Not forgetting the big one. Such commanding club displays led to his memorable World Cup campaign for Argentina, arriving home with a winner’s medal in one hand and a trophy for the FIFA Best Young Player in the other.
The question for Chelsea is, what sort of player are they getting for such an eye-watering fee? Crucially, how will he fit in Graham Potter’s set-up going forward?
For those wanting a reminder of Fernandez’s statistical profile, The Athletic tipped the young midfielder to have a starring role for his country in The Radar, ahead of the 2022 World Cup.
Put simply, Fernandez has often been the metronome for Benfica, sitting as a left-sided defensive midfielder in a predominant 4-3-2-1 structure. As evidence of his unrelenting ability to dictate the tempo of a game, no player (with 900-plus minutes) in the Primeira Liga averages more than Fernandez’s 109 passes per 90.
Looking at his share of touches in the Champions League this season, you can see just how much he patrols the central areas of the pitch.
Benfica boss Roger Schmidt likes his full-backs to play high upfield, which gives space for Fernandez to drop in and act as a link player, especially given opposition teams often defend passively against them with all 11 players behind the ball.
Fernandez will often play safe, exchanging passes with centre-backs, but when the opportunity presents itself he tries to find advancing full-backs or wingers running in behind, like at Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League in October — where he completed 90.6 per cent of his 53 passes.
Crucially, Fernandez is comfortable in a possession-dominant side, with Benfica’s 66 per cent possession being comfortably higher than any other team in Portugal. A transition to a Chelsea side similarly geared towards a ball-orientated style of play should mean that the Argentinian will need little time to adapt.
While not his key attribute, Fernandez has shown attacking creativity for Benfica this season with five assists — from an expected assists tally of 3.7 — in the league. A trademark has been inswinging, back-post crosses from the left. At CD Santa Clara, he receives from left-back Alex Grimaldo and picks out winger Fredrik Aursnes.
Importantly, these crosses have typically been from short corners. Fernandez has taken 41 corners this league season, the joint-most of any Benfica player (with David Neres), but he has only crossed with 14 of these, playing the other 27 short.
When playing short, Fernandez has looked for quick combinations to find a crossing angle from deeper, which is more suited to the back-post cross.
An example of this can be seen in Benfica’s opener at home to Juventus in the Champions League last October.
And similarly against Gil Vicente to find No 9 Goncalo Ramos.
However, while Fernandez has offered a creative threat, his contribution towards his team’s attacking sequences are geared far more towards the build-up phase.
Much in the same way Thiago plays for Liverpool or Rodri plays for Manchester City, the play will go through Fernandez — he won’t always be the one to finish an attacking sequence but you can be sure that his fingerprints are on the move somewhere.
From a creative standpoint, Chelsea are in need of a midfield combination that will enhance their attack. Their central midfield looks strong on paper, with Mateo Kovacic, Mason Mount, Conor Gallagher, Lewis Hall, Denis Zakaria and N’Golo Kante all on the books — but injuries and individual weaknesses are proving an issue for Graham Potter.
Kovacic’s ball-carrying abilities add value but his passing range is limited, whereas Jorginho — who joined Arsenal in this window — has been a safe distributor but lacked mobility. Meanwhile, Conor Gallagher is the opposite of the Italian and Graham Potter has turned to 18-year-old academy graduate Lewis Hall as a left-footed central midfielder.
Chelsea’s 1.1 expected goals per 90 is only 11th best in the Premier League this season, with Potter yet to construct a coherent attacking structure that works from back to front. This is reflected in his tinkering, having made 61 changes to starting XIs in his 14 Premier League games, an average of 4.4 each match — the most of any manager or head coach since he moved to Chelsea.
If Jorginho (passer), Kovacic (dribbler) and Gallagher (energetic defending) are the points of a central-midfielder profile triangle, then Fernandez sits somewhere in between all three.
One of his main strengths is dropping deeper from a typical central midfielder position and into a quarterback-style role close to the back four, looking for diagonal switches to the far-side winger or full-back — it is rather easy to picture Mykhailo Mudryk on the end of passes like these.
Fernandez could provide solutions given Chelsea are not penetrative enough from central areas. Despite ranking third in the Premier League for total passes, they rank just 11th for through balls (25) and 10th for switched passes (75), with centre-backs Kalidou Koulibaly and Thiago Silva their top switchers of play (13 each).
Of course, Fernandez’s value is likely to have been skewed by a “World Cup tax”, after becoming a crucial cog in Lionel Scaloni’s victorious system.
Having only made his international debut in September 2022, Fernandez was trusted to start in each of Argentina’s knockout games in Qatar, quickly adapting to Scaloni’s tactical tweaks.
While the formation would often change, Fernandez was consistently the base of a midfield triangle with Alexis Mac Allister and Rodrigo De Paul in front of him.
This is shown below in the quarter-final against the Netherlands with Argentina in a 3-5-2 system…
…but is very much the same principle against France in the final, where Argentina lined up in a 4-3-3.
The influence Fernandez wielded in the final was hugely impressive, as he logged the most touches (118) and successful passes (77) of any player on the pitch in Qatar. Argentina consistently isolated left-winger Angel Di Maria against French right-back Jules Kounde, largely because he kept getting service from the central midfielders.
Here Fernandez receives from Cristian Romero, turns, and plays in behind to Di Maria.
While Potter likes his midfielders to circulate the ball with care and consideration, the passing range that Fernandez offers can unlock a defence with pace and purpose. A fully fit Ben Chilwell and Reece James could also be among those benefiting the most from those searching diagonals.
Without the ball, Fernandez is a strong front-foot defender and this suits Potter’s liking of a high press, which demands the central midfielders track their direct opponent. As evidence of the bite he offers, Fernandez’s 10 tackles were the most of any player in a World Cup final since Gennaro Gattuso made 15 in 2006.
However, there is room to improve Fernandez’s timing and tackling technique.
Given the price tag hanging over him, it is easy to forget that the young midfielder still has so much to learn at just 22 years old. His aggressive, front-foot style is likely to make way for more defensive awareness as his career progresses. How he adapts to the faster, more physically demanding Premier League will also be something to keep an eye on.
Forgetting talent, tactical fit, or statistical output, one key attribute that Fernandez offers is youth, as Graham Potter is tasked with rebuilding a Chelsea squad that has a number of older players.
This is particularly pertinent in the middle of the park, where an often-injured Kante, a now-departed Jorginho, and short-term fix Zakaria are not the future of Chelsea’s midfield.
In Fernandez, Chelsea are investing in a player who has his best years ahead of him and who is feasibly able to dominate their midfield for the next eight to 10 years.
So, is he worth the money? Transfermarkt’s crowdsourced “market value” gives Fernandez a worth of approximately £49million — miles below the fee that Chelsea will pay Benfica, and representative of the inflated values in the current market.
While the Argentinian is undeniably talented, so few games played at the highest level will invariably add a layer of risk to any transfer — sample size matters, everyone.
However, Chelsea are investing in a young talented midfielder with European, Champions League and international experience, and those players don’t come cheap. Potter is in need of a midfielder who can dictate the tempo of a game, and provide a key role within their attacking structure.
With the unrelenting conveyor belt of players arriving at Stamford Bridge in the Todd Boehly era, Potter’s challenge is now to fit all his new signings into a coherent team.
Fernandez will literally be central to those plans.
