Spending vasts amounts of money on young talent over the course of the past two transfer windows, Chelsea have turned to Brazil a fair bit.
The Blues have already signed the likes of Andrey Santos and Angelo Gabriel from there, with the former unsuccessfully sent on loan to Nottingham Forest, while the latter was gifted to new satellite club Strasbourg in Ligue 1.
L’Equipe in France have a big article on the Brazilian on loan from Chelsea, explaining how difficult it has been for him in France, with some criticisms thrown his way.
While he enjoyed a good start with some promising performances, what followed wasn’t pretty, as the winger is ‘struggling to seduce’ after four months.
The idea was for him to get lots of game time away from Chelsea, and he has mostly been ‘neutral and insipid’ on the pitch since.
He’s accused of being rather predictable with his dribbling, with some of his teammates becoming ‘frustrated’ as they try and offer him solutions.
The biggest issue, however, is his ‘profound tactical flaws’, as he seems incredibly reluctant to track back, which often proves costly for his team.
Due to this, he has found himself out of the starting line-up, with some at the club trying to rally around him to lift him up a bit.
One said: “It’s been hard for a few weeks for Angelo, but he has mitigating circumstances: he’s discovering European football. He didn’t do pre-season with us and he has felt a bit isolated because of the language barrier.”
The club have since brought in João Francisco Almeida as a fitness coach, who is also acting as the player’s interpreter, in hope that this could help him settle in a bit better.
In the meantime, as L’Equipe put it, his expected explosion on the scene will simply have to wait a while longer.
