Enzo Fernández, who joined us from Benfica in January 2023 for a then British record transfer fee, recently celebrated his third anniversary at Chelsea Football Club and has made over 150 appearances in all competitions. Enzo had just won the World Cup with Argentina a month earlier, announcing himself on the world stage with a star-like performance that earned him the tournament’s young player award. He has the football world at his feet but he has no doubts about Chelsea’s plans.
Unfortunately, progress on the project continues to be slow. We finally won some trophies last season, including the Club World Cup in the summer, but the trends this season are wrong and show no signs of reversing any time soon. Chelsea’s bosses still believe they are building a genuine winning team – or at least they’ve made that a public message – but we don’t appear to be any closer to that goal than we were three years ago.
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So it’s perhaps no surprise that Enzo was asked about his long-term future in SW6 after Chelsea suffered their heaviest defeat (overall) in Europe’s two-legged knockout tie. After all, the 25-year-old has been subject to transfer rumors on several occasions in the past (mainly to Real Madrid), and they all occurred when he was still a young player. Now that he is about to enter the prime years of his career, it is not unreasonable that he might question whether Chelsea is still the club where he can achieve his ultimate goal.
So when asked about his long-term future last night, he uttered a classic Hazard “we’ll see”. The short term obviously belongs to Chelsea, but beyond that… yeah, we’ll see.
“We have to congratulate PSG, they were much better than us. I think they beat us tactically.
“Since I’ve been at Chelsea, situations like this have happened. It’s time to support my teammates. We can turn this situation around; there are eight games left in the Premier League and we need to qualify for the next Champions League and that’s what we want. We want to win the FA Cup and that’s what we’re fighting for. It’s a championship and we play to win.”
“Am I guaranteed to stay at Chelsea next season? I don’t know. Now I’m focused on here and then the World Cup, we’ll see.”
– Enzo Fernandez; Source: ESPN Argentina via Google Translate
Remember the time when he was celebrating a goal, he stood in front of the Blue Bridge fans, pointed firmly at the lawn and said, this is where he lives? Yeah, it’s not like that now.
We’ll see.
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Now, obviously, Enzo isn’t going to leave for less than a huge fee, but a club that has been linked with him on and off over the years (like Real Madrid or PSG) could certainly afford a huge transfer fee. If Chelsea does continue to bleed money as a result of our extremely well managed finances, extremely well handled pitch situation and well thought out squad construction, we may need a large transfer fee (or two) to keep various balance sheet and profit payout ratio calculations going.
