8. Enzo Fernandez

[TheHulk 1,847]

1 minute ago, LAM09 said:

I just don't see that happening. If City want to re-sign him, I'm sure it will get done rather quickly. Also, I read something about a set fee should Southampton get relegated.

So far I didn't see anywhere they want him back, let's hope we get him.

[OneMoSalah 8,773]

9 hours ago, MoroccanBlue said:

Get Lavia. 

Is he really that good? I mean for the £40-50m which he is apparently going to cost if Southampton stay up? I get that against us he looked decent but who didn’t for Southampton that day. I know there was a bid for him in the summer too after Southampton signed him (which I didn’t understand considering they got him for £14m at the beginning of the window - why did we not just go for him then?). 

Not seen a huge amount of him but I am a bit dubious, was even dubious after the 35m bid (IIRC was that or 40) in the summer. Also would be surprised if City go for him considering they have Rodri and Kalvin Phillips who are more defensively minded.

I would much rather we went for Declan Rice or even Bruno Guimaraes out of the names I’ve seen that we’ve been linked to for MF players recently. Players with a bit more experience and who are proven but still young enough and can still improve to be a long term part of the team. Rice in particular is at a point where he’s pretty decent in a lot of facets of his game and I think he could progress a level or two here. Granted his performances for West Ham have been mixed and he has still got issues to iron out in his game but I think he’s ready to play here or at a United or at a City or at a Liverpool etc. 

[LAM09 6,736]

13 minutes ago, TheHulk said:

So far I didn't see anywhere they want him back, let's hope we get him.

Man City could re-sign former star | The Transfer Tavern (footballtransfertavern.com)

This has been mentioned in a few other places as well.

[Fernando 6,447]

Dang this guy is insane. We miss creativity in the mid.Jorginho never cut it.

The best was fabregas in that role, But Enzo is a mix because he can tackle. 

Maybe he is more in the verrati type of mould. 

[Mário César 972]

what a player

[NikkiCFC 7,927]

Dear lord, what a player. Transfers of +100m are always bust but this is jackpot. His passes, tackles... 

[DH1988 1,273]

What an absolute gem of a player, you’d think he’d been in the EPL for years.

[Costa19 858]

Elite elite player! What an absolute bulldozer and playmaker at the same time. Love him! 
 

My only concern is that we should not run him down. The kid has played every game for Benfica + WC + all games since he signed. 
 
But how do we manage without him?! 

[Simon1991 225]

2 hours ago, Costa19 said:

Elite elite player! What an absolute bulldozer and playmaker at the same time. Love him! 
 

My only concern is that we should not run him down. The kid has played every game for Benfica + WC + all games since he signed. 
 
But how do we manage without him?! 

Yes that's a legit concern. At the same time he gives the impression his game is not as intense as Kante or other mfer's. Medical team also closely look at physical data for decision making now; so i want to assume he'll get a rest if he needs one, or at least have his load properly managed during training. 

Edited March 11, 2023 by Simon1991

[DDA 9,689]

Fucking love him.

 

[TheHulk 1,847]

If we get his partner right in the summer, we might really win the league. World class baller.

[Magic Lamps 11,653]

2 hours ago, TheHulk said:

If we get his partner right in the summer, we might really win the league. World class baller.

We would still need a striker

but Enzo might be the key to better break down buses. He is better than Jorginho in most things  but his two assists for us so far Display the most important one. Defence splitting passing. Creativity to create goalscoring chances from deep. 

[Reddish-Blue 2,341]

3 hours ago, TheHulk said:

If we get his partner right in the summer, we might really win the league. World class baller.

Our attack needs to improve massively to dream about winning the league.  

[Vesper 28,719]

'It's not normal' - Enzo Fernandez's breakneck rise from River Plate loanee to Chelsea

https://theathletic.com/4251053/2023/03/14/enzo-fernandez-Chelsea-profile/

His ascent has been so swift, such a magic carpet ride, that it can be hard to wrap your head around.

But if you had to boil it down to one thought, one sentence, it would probably be something like this: Enzo Fernandez is the best footballer in the world that you had never heard of six months ago. By some margin, too.

Caveats obviously apply here — anyone with even a passing interest in Argentinian domestic football will be rolling their eyes — but the broad point stands. In August, Fernandez was taking his first steps in Europe after leaving River Plate, his boyhood club. Benfica had paid an initial fee of just €10million (£8.9m; $10.6m) and, though there was excitement about his potential, it was seen as a long-term bet. He had a grand total of two youth caps for his country.

And now? Fernandez is a World Cup winner, the fifth most expensive player in the history of his sport, and widely expected to be a pillar of the Chelsea team for the next decade.

---

Inside Argentina’s World Cup win…

• Messi’s voice, lucky Aguero and lots of beef — how they won in Qatar
• Michael Cox on ‘the most tactically flexible World Cup winners ever’

---

Life, as another whip-smart youngster once noted, moves pretty fast.

For some, it has all been a bit too quick for comfort. Benfica, for example, would have preferred a little more time to enjoy Fernandez and the chance for their investment to pay off on the pitch as well as on their balance sheet.

Back home, though, the general reaction to his progress has been joyous, open-mouthed wonder. Fernandez’s family are said to be stunned by how briskly things have moved and ex-colleagues and coaches feel the same way.

“I expected him to reach this level, but the speed of it all has surprised me,” says Ezequiel Unsain, a former team-mate. “He has improved a huge amount in a short period.”

Hernan Crespo, the former Chelsea and Argentina striker, is even more emphatic. He managed Fernandez during a formative loan spell at Defensa y Justicia between 2020 and 2021 and sums up his old charge’s jet-powered journey in three words.

“It’s not normal,” Crespo tells The Athletic.

Fernandez grew up in Villa Lynch, a scruffy corner of Buenos Aires, with his parents and three brothers.

His father, Raul, bounced between jobs: after being laid off at a metalwork plant, he worked as a labourer before landing a position in an ink factory. His passion was football, River Plate in particular; Enzo was named after Enzo Francescoli, the elegant Uruguayan playmaker who led River to Copa Libertadores glory in 1996.

Fernandez started off at his local club, La Recova, playing small-sided games. They call it ‘Baby futbol’ in Argentina, but that is not to say it isn’t serious business. The scouts from the big clubs always have their eyes peeled and it was not long before one of them — Pablo Esquivel, the coach of a rival team but also part of River’s extensive network — spotted Fernandez.

“He was unstoppable,” Esquivel later told the Clarin newspaper. “He was so young but you could see how intelligent he was.”

Esquivel recommended Fernandez to River’s academy chief, then visited Raul and his wife, Marta, at their home. They initially insisted Enzo was too young: he was only five at the time. But Esquivel remained on the case and, a year later, was given the green light to sign him up.

At River, Fernandez continued to play baby futbol with a side called Parque Chas, an affiliate of the bigger club — team-mates called him “The Musician” because he was said to conduct the orchestra — before moving up to 11-a-side. He trained after school, catching the No 28 bus to River’s training ground with his mum. They usually only arrived back home at night due to the suffocating traffic on Avenida General Paz.

Fernandez moved serenely through the early age groups, impressing with his technique and vision. “The ball almost came up to his knee, but this little boy made decisions that you saw the big boys making,” Bruno Quinteros, his coach at under-9 and under-10 level, said in an interview with Infobae. “He always understood the game very well.”

Fernandez could be unruly off the field — he once got in trouble for starting a stone-throwing fight with team-mates — but was never anything less than deeply committed when it came to football. Quinteros tells the story of a winter trip to the mountains of Neuquen, where a 10-year-old Fernandez demanded an extra morning training session to prepare for a game against a local side in the afternoon.

“It was eight degrees below zero and the cars were covered in snow,” Quinteros recalled. “But Enzo knew he had to train.”

Things slowed down when he entered his teens. Team-mates had growth spurts and Fernandez — “small and a bit chubby” in the words of one youth coach — was overtaken. In the under-13s and under-14s, he was bumped down to what was effectively the B team, playing in local competitions rather than the national league. Sometimes he did not even start at that lower level.

His confidence was dented. Esquivel, his mentor at River, told him the solution was training more and eating better. His family found him a personal trainer and a nutritionist. Team-mates from that time still call him ‘Fatty’, but Fernandez knuckled down and reaped the rewards.

“He lost five kilos in one month and never looked back,” his father said in an interview on Argentinian radio.

---

At 17, Fernandez was training with River’s reserves. His coach there was Luigi Villalba, who saw similarities between him and Exequiel Palacios, a young midfielder who had already made the step up to the River first-team and now plays for Bayer Leverkusen.

“Enzo was an excellent passer, over short and long distances,” Villalba tells The Athletic. “He had a good shot from the edge of the box. But above all, he had a great head on his shoulders. He was a leader, a big personality.

“He was always asking us what was missing in his game, what he still had to work on. He would take our views on board and put them into action in no time. He had a special mentality.”

Tactically, Fernandez could anchor the midfield — as he has for Chelsea — but tended to do his best work a little further forward.

“Sometimes he was the No 5, the deepest player in a midfield three,” says Villalba. “But I mainly used him as an ‘interior’ — just to the right or just to the left — with the freedom to break into the opponents’ area.

“The team really benefitted when I let him loose like that because he’s so good at playing the final ball, slipping passes through to the strikers. But he performed brilliantly in every position. He just had this intelligence.”

When River’s first team saw off Boca Juniors to win the Libertadores in December 2018, Fernandez did what most of the club’s fans in Buenos Aires did: he went to the Obelisco in the centre of town and celebrated like a maniac. A month later, he was playing against the senior players in a training match at River’s Ezeiza complex — and doing so well that Marcelo Gallardo, the head coach, put him in the squad for the league meeting with Patronato that weekend.

He would have to wait another year for his debut, but it was enough to make experienced figures at River sit up and take notice. Team-mate Leonardo Ponzio, who played more than 350 matches for River across two spells, says Fernandez made an excellent first impression.

“As he came through the age groups, you’d always hear his name,” Ponzio tells The Athletic. “People spoke about this kid who had good feet, looked after the ball well and knew how to make the team tick. He showed all of those attributes when he joined the first-team squad. Even as a young kid, he understood the rhythms of a match.”

At that stage, Fernandez still had a few rough edges to smooth. “He needed to show a bit more commitment off the ball, to sacrifice himself more when the time came to defend,” says Ponzio. “He wasn’t so good at the invisible work of helping the team.”

Villalba concurs: “He was brilliant with the ball, but he needed to be more alert out of possession — to deal better with changes of rhythm, to be less passive. That was something he had to resolve before being ready for the first team at River.”

The other thing he needed was experience, but the route to the first team was congested: Ponzio, Enzo Perez, Bruno Zuculini and Santiago Sosa were all vying for spots in central midfield. Even after playing a starring role in the Under-20s Copa Libertadores in early 2020, Fernandez only managed one substitute appearance for the first team across all competitions before the summer break.

Gallardo’s solution was to send him out on loan to Defensa y Justicia, one of Buenos Aires’ smaller professional clubs. He told Fernandez he could build some momentum before staking his claim back at River.

Defensa had no option to buy; Fernandez had no option but to prove himself.

---

Defensa played dynamic, front-foot football. “I wanted the team to press without the ball and generate (situations of) superiority with the ball on the ground,” Crespo explains.

This suited Fernandez, whose quick thinking and refined technique allowed him to accelerate things from deep. “He helped us to develop our identity,” says Crespo. “He was a very complete player who understood the responsibility of playing in midfield.”

Unsain, the captain of that team, was similarly enamoured. “Enzo improved us,” he tells The Athletic. “He was intense and aggressive. He really stood up in the midfield, organising the play and always demanding the ball in complicated situations.

“His level never dipped: he seemed to get better and better in every game. He became one of our best players.”

Nor was this just any old season for Defensa. They made history by winning the Copa Sudamericana (the continent’s equivalent of the Europa League), with Fernandez coming to the fore at key moments. He came off the bench to score a vital goal in the quarter-final against Bahia, started both legs of the semi-final and shone in the final against Lanus.

“He was brilliant in those games,” says Unsain. “We had talented players all over the pitch, but he was the boss of the team. It was our first international trophy and he played a fundamental role. It was like the ball belonged to him.”

For Crespo, those knockout games showcased one of Fernandez’s best assets.

“His technical skill was there for all to see, but I would also highlight his mentality,” he says. “He is a winner and an optimist. Although he was young, he rose to every challenge — especially in important moments. He has this ability to adapt and perform very naturally on the big stage.”

Gallardo took note and recalled Fernandez midway through 2021 — six months earlier than planned. That rankled a few at Defensa, who had just reached the last 16 of the Libertadores for the first time in their history and suddenly found themselves a key player short. “Painful,” Unsain calls it.

For Fernandez — and yes, there’s a bit of a theme emerging here — the timing worked out. He scored his first River goal in August, cemented a starting spot in October and won the league in December.

“He came back a different player,” says Ponzio. “He had become the footballer he is today: someone who wins the ball as well as passing it. His movement was good, he had great vision, he could create. He made everything look easy and played with real personality. He was a phenomenon.”

Again, Fernandez played as a box-to-box midfielder, usually just to the right of a holding player, with the licence to get forward. “That’s the position I like the most,” he told newspaper Ole in January 2022. “I’ve always felt comfortable playing near the goal, looking for pockets of space so I can create a chance or shoot.”

The River fans loved him, not just because he shaped so many matches — Fernandez scored eight goals and laid on six more in 19 games in the first half of 2022 — but because he represented them on the field.

He was the local kid who went away and clawed his way back, who made a point of throwing his jersey into the crowd after nearly every game.

“That is part of his identity,” says Ponzio. “He was a typical River player: technical, driven, obsessed with winning. It’s not easy to come back to the club after going on loan, but he was made to succeed at River.”

---

Benfica won the race for Fernandez in the summer of 2022.

The fee was relatively modest (€10million for 75 per cent of his rights, plus up to €8m in add-ons), but the Portuguese club were prepared to let him stay in Argentina until River had completed their Libertadores campaign.

In the end, they did not have to wait very long at all: River lost their last-16 tie with Velez Sarsfield in early July and Fernandez headed to Lisbon.

There, he pressed the fast-forward button again. Fernandez scored on debut in the Champions League qualifier against Midtjylland, then repeated the trick in the return leg, with a league goal against Arouca sandwiched in the middle.

“Deadly Enzo” was Record’s early description of him and soon the other aspects of his game came to the fore as well. Fernandez became “the compass of the team” (Expresso) and earned rave reviews from the Portuguese football establishment.

“His passes and vision remind me of Zinedine Zidane,” said Jose Peseiro, the former Sporting Lisbon and Porto manager. “He also finds solutions just by controlling the ball in a certain way. His level is absolutely amazing.”

(Nor is Zidane the only Real Madrid legend to whom Fernandez has been compared. “He has a panoramic view of the game and a refined touch, very similar to Luka Modric,” one of his old River mentors once told Clarin.)

You’ll know most of the rest.

Fernandez was a late bolter for Argentina’s World Cup squad — you won’t find his image in the official sticker book — but played with the confidence of a veteran after being given a chance against Mexico. World Cup winner’s medal, best young player at the tournament, national hero status: not a bad month’s work, all told. “He was not fazed at all,” says Crespo.

His Benfica exit was not quite as frictionless. Rumours about his future were already swirling when he scored in the cup game against Varzim on January 10, but his celebration — a tap of the badge and an “I’m staying here” gesture — made supporters believe he was prepared to stick around until the end of the season. There was, after all, a hugely promising Champions League run to conclude.

But Fernandez, when push came to shove, decided he wanted to go.

“He was not committed to Benfica,” the club’s sporting director, Rui Costa, said in an angry interview. “It was not a transfer we wanted to do, but I’m not going to cry about a player who didn’t want to play for us.”

The hope for Chelsea, who spent a British record £106.7m to bring him to the Premier League in January, will be that Fernandez is in it for the long haul because his early contributions have been encouraging. He has been a reassuring presence — particularly on the ball — in recent wins against Leeds United, Borussia Dortmund and Leicester City, which have helped steady the ship at Stamford Bridge. Already, just a few weeks after his arrival, he looks like a player the club can build around.

Tellingly, the usual worries about integration and getting up to speed in the Premier League have been a complete non-factor — no surprise, really, given his path to this point. Fernandez just seems to have an unshakeable sense of purpose. Destiny, you might even call it.

“So much has happened for him since in the last three years,” Unsain says. “He has a knack for adapting quickly, even when he makes a step up. River, Benfica, Argentina at the World Cup… it speaks volumes about his personality.”

Crespo agrees and believes Fernandez is now in exactly the right place. “Chelsea is a great step for any player,” adds the Premier League side’s former striker. “I have the best memories of my time there and it’s a great place for Enzo to develop.

“He will handle the pressure. He is a very good guy, humble and hard-working.

“And he has consistently shown that he has the ability to adapt to new challenges.”

[ulsterchelsea 3,221]

This boy is rapidly becoming a firm favourite of mine. Gonna be a gem

[James 5,192]

 

[Clockwork 1,794]

I don’t get it why do some people think he is not a 6?

[Special Juan 27,419]

This guy was exceptional last night.