According to The Athletic, Chelsea must weigh Enzo's off-field issues against his tactical fit, and selling him could better balance the team.

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

When his name was announced among Chelsea's substitutes before kickoff, hostile boos erupted. As he walked across the pitch toward the bench to prepare for the second half, home supporters chanted insulting songs.

The pain from England's loss to Argentina in a fiercely contested World Cup semifinal last summer has not healed. What further provoked English fans was seeing Enzo standing alongside his compatriot Valentín Barco. Earlier, in Atlanta, Bellingham had slapped Barco after Enzo celebrated his equalizer in front of the English players.

Chelsea supporters at Craven Cottage responded to Enzo with applause, chanting his name. Football cannot escape its tribal nature, and rival fans' insults often galvanize one's own supporters. At full-time, the majority of the away section also showed their support for Enzo, and he gave his match shirt to a fan as he left the pitch.

If Enzo joins Enzo Maresca's Manchester City, no one expects this goodwill to continue. Maresca was already unpopular at Stamford Bridge and is now widely despised.

The fatigue from the transfer saga is mounting. After Chelsea defeated Fulham 3-2 on Monday, manager Xabi Alonso expressed his frustration over the prolonged lack of resolution in an interview. When asked by BBC Match of the Day about Enzo's future, he said: "In football, nothing surprises me. We'll see. I hope we know what will happen in the future, but we'll have to wait and see how this week goes."

From an off-field perspective, Chelsea's reasons for selling Enzo this summer are easily understood. Throughout his time at the club, he has caused problems through public actions and the related activities of his agent, Javier Pastore. He publicly criticized the club's decision-makers last season, was then ambiguously 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 strategy he has adopted is provocative and confrontational. If he stays and gets a raise, who can guarantee something similar won't happen again in a year or two? If the two parties cannot reach a new agreement, what confidence does Chelsea have that he will be a reliable player under Alonso this season?

In contrast, the football reasons for letting Enzo go receive less discussion. Manchester City could improve significantly if Maresca gets Enzo, but retaining him at Chelsea carries a real risk of significantly worsening the team Alonso is building.

Enzo's supporters among Chelsea fans may find this puzzling. He was undoubtedly one of the club's best players last season, scoring 10 goals as a midfielder in his first Premier League season and 15 goals in all competitions. He successfully transformed into Stamford Bridge's best goal-scoring number 8 since Lampard, and he is an incredibly talented passer—credit where credit is due.

But this transformation also reveals that Enzo's Chelsea career has taken a strange path. In January 2023, Chelsea signed him from Benfica for €120 million, approximately £106 million, initially hoping he would succeed Jorginho as the club's new generation deep-lying playmaker. He played in this position for most of the disastrous 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 in midfield's deeper roles. While he has worked to improve his fitness in recent years, his athleticism can still be insufficient when covering large areas of the midfield, and his defensive awareness is not sharp enough to effectively disrupt opponents' build-up play.

Pochettino had serious doubts about the viability of a double pivot with Enzo and Caicedo. Even with Gallagher pressing high ahead of them, Chelsea often collapsed in defensive transitions, conceding 63 goals in the 2023-24 Premier League season.

Maresca's solution was to push Enzo into the left half-space higher up the pitch, with an inverted fullback embedded in the deep midfield alongside Caicedo, and to slow Chelsea's possession tempo to keep the team more compact and better equipped to handle counterattacks. These adjustments helped solidify the team's overall structure and allowed the Argentine to play his best football since arriving at Stamford Bridge, but at the cost of affecting other areas—most notably, the significant decline in Palmer's form.

From early indications, Alonso will not adopt the same setup in his 3-4-2-1 system. Enzo could fit well as a left-sided number 10 behind João Felix, but the considerable outlay of approximately £117 million spent on Morgan Rogers this summer means he will occupy one of those two positions alongside Palmer. If either were unavailable, Estêvão is more than capable of stepping in.

Enzo often plays in a deeper role for Argentina with great success. But beyond acknowledging the fundamental differences between international and club football, it's also worth remembering that Argentina has shown defensive vulnerabilities in nearly every match across the last two World Cups, conceding four goals in two matches against Cape Verde and Egypt on their way to the 2026 World Cup finals.

Obviously it's unfair to attribute these problems to a single player, especially since 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 has been able to make the Enzo-Caicedo double pivot work consistently without the ball. Alonso is very intelligent and may have tactical solutions in mind, but if Chelsea can secure a fair offer from Manchester City, wouldn't it be simpler to let him go and reinvest?

However, this path is not without risk as the transfer window deadline approaches. Most of the central midfield dominoes have already fallen this summer, and many of the remaining players are at clubs unwilling to sell without urgent financial motivation to risk their season's objectives by letting them leave. Alex Scott and Adam Wharton are examples of this.

It's entirely conceivable that Chelsea could sell Enzo to Manchester City for a price above his January 2023 purchase fee, but simultaneously, the club could also have to pay significantly more than his real value for his replacement. This is the nature of the current inflated transfer market, but it could still prove more profitable than keeping Enzo and leaving Alonso with a difficult puzzle to solve in balancing the team.

Even in defeat, Fulham successfully exposed 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 effective balance for a team that already appears to have one of the Premier League's most threatening attacks.

The identity of this player depends on Chelsea's sporting direction team, who have always maintained a list of potential targets. During the decision-making process in the final days of August, a wealth of evidence will undoubtedly lead them to the conclusion that Enzo is not the right option.

Traducido por IA.

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