According to The Athletic, Chelsea must weigh Enzo's off-field issues against tactical considerations, and selling him could make the team more balanced.

On Monday, local time, Fulham supporters at Craven Cottage gave Enzo a taste of the reception he may face at various Premier League stadiums this season, regardless of whether he ends up as a Chelsea or Manchester City player next month.

When his name was read out among Chelsea's substitutes before kickoff, hostile boos erupted. As he walked onto the pitch to the bench to prepare for the second half, home supporters sang abusive chants loudly.

The pain of England's loss to Argentina in a heated World Cup semifinal last summer has not yet healed. Adding to the English supporters' frustration was the presence of Enzo's compatriot Valentín Barco alongside him. Earlier, in Atlanta, Bellingham had slapped Barco after Enzo celebrated an equalizing goal in front of the English players.

Chelsea supporters at Craven Cottage responded to Enzo with applause and chanted his name. Football cannot escape its tribal nature, and abuse from opposing fans often galvanizes one's own supporters. At the final whistle, most supporters in the away section also demonstrated their support for Enzo, who gave his match shirt to a supporter as he left the pitch.

If Enzo joins Enzo Maresca's Manchester City, no one believes that goodwill will last. Maresca was already unpopular at Stamford Bridge and is now widely despised.

Transfer saga fatigue is spreading. After Chelsea defeated Fulham 3-2 on Monday, local time, manager Enzo Alonso expressed his frustration with the lack of progress in an interview. When asked about Enzo's future by the BBC's Match of the Day, he said: "In football, nothing surprises me. We'll have to wait and see. I hope we know what will happen in the future, but we'll have to see how this week unfolds."

From an off-field perspective, Chelsea's reasons for selling Enzo this summer are easy to understand. Throughout much of last season, he caused problems for the club through public actions and his agent Javier Pastore's operations. He publicly criticized the club's decision-makers last season, then was linked with Real Madrid, and this summer has not discouraged interest from Maresca and Manchester City.

Even if his goal is simply to stay at Stamford Bridge and secure a significantly improved contract, the tactics he has employed are provocative and confrontational. If he stays and gets a raise, who can guarantee that something similar won't happen again in a year or two? If the two parties cannot agree on a new contract, how much confidence can Chelsea have that he will be a reliable player for Alonso this season?

By contrast, the footballing reasons for letting Enzo go are less discussed. While Manchester City would certainly be significantly improved by acquiring Enzo under Maresca, there is a real risk that keeping him at Chelsea could demonstrably worsen the team Alonso is building.

Enzo's supporters among Chelsea fans may find this intriguing. There is no doubt that he was one of the club's best players last season, scoring 10 goals in a single Premier League season as a midfielder for the first time, and 15 goals across all competitions. He has successfully transformed into Chelsea's best-scoring number 8 since Lampard, while also being an incredibly talented passer, which deserves full credit.

But this transformation also suggests that Enzo's Chelsea career has taken an unusual path. In January 2023, Chelsea signed him from Benfica for €120 million, or approximately £106 million, originally expecting him to replace Jorginho as the deep-lying midfielder for a new generation of world-class midfielders. He played in this position for most of the difficult second half of the 2022-23 season and during Pochettino's tenure in 2023-24.

The problem is that Chelsea's defense was never solid enough when Enzo operated as a deep-lying midfielder. Although he has worked to improve his fitness in recent years, his athleticism may still be insufficient to cover large areas of the midfield, and his defensive awareness is not sharp enough to effectively disrupt the opposition's buildup play.

Pochettino seriously doubted the viability of a midfield pairing of Enzo and Caicedo. Even with Gallagher leading the high press in front of them, Chelsea was often dismantled in defensive transitions and conceded 63 goals in the 2023-24 Premier League season.

Maresca's solution was to push Enzo forward into the left half-space, while an inverted full-back dropped into midfield alongside Caicedo, and Chelsea slowed down their possession-based game, keeping the team more compact and better able to handle opposition counterattacks. These adjustments helped stabilize the team's overall structure and allowed the Argentine to play his best football since arriving at Stamford Bridge, but at the cost of other areas, most notably Palmer's significant drop in performance.

By early indications, Alonso will not adopt the same formation in his 3-4-2-1 system. Enzo would fit well as a number 10 on the left behind João Félix, but the expensive acquisition of Morgan Rogers this summer for approximately £117 million means he and Palmer will occupy those two positions. If one is absent, Estêvão is more than capable of stepping in.

Enzo frequently operates in a deeper role for Argentina with great success. But beyond recognizing the fundamental differences between international and club football, one must also remember that Argentina has shown defensive vulnerabilities in nearly every match in the last two World Cups, and conceded 4 goals in two games against Cape Verde and Egypt on the way to the 2026 World Cup final.

It would obviously be unfair to attribute these problems to a single player, especially as Enzo is a midfielder, but these performances help us see the bigger picture. Over the past three and a half years, none of the managers appointed by BlueCo have been able to make the Enzo and Caicedo midfield pairing consistently effective without the ball. Alonso is very intelligent and may have tactical solutions in mind, but wouldn't it be easier if Chelsea received an ideal offer from Manchester City to simply let him go and reinvest?

However, this path is not without risks as the transfer window approaches its end. The transfer dominoes for major central midfielders have mostly fallen this summer, and many of the players still not transferred are at clubs unwilling to sell, without urgent financial motivation to risk their season's objectives by letting them go. Alex Scott and Adam Wharton are examples of this.

It is entirely conceivable that Chelsea could sell Enzo to Manchester City for more than what they paid for him in January 2023, but at the same time, the club could also have to pay well above his real value for his replacement. That is the nature of today's inflated transfer market, but it may still be more worthwhile to consider than keeping Enzo and leaving Alonso with a difficult problem to solve in balancing the team.

Even in defeat, Fulham managed to expose weaknesses in Chelsea's defensive structure at Craven Cottage. Caicedo's return from injury will help, but Lavia also has his defensive limitations. Bringing in the right number 6 could establish an effective balance for a team that already appears to have one of the most threatening attacks in the Premier League.

The identity of that player is up to Chelsea's sporting management team, which always maintains a list of potential targets. In the decision-making process in late August, a wealth of evidence will undoubtedly lead them to conclude that Enzo is not the right fit.

Traduzido por IA.

O site do AF já está online! Acesse notícias completas, comentários, detalhes de partidas e estatísticas no seu computador. Acesse: www.allfootballapp.com